This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694
DELIVERABLE
Project Acronym: CIVIC EPISTEMOLOGIES
Grant Agreement number: 632694
Project Title: Civic Epistemologies: Development of a Roadmap for Citizen Researchers in the age of Digital Culture
D4.1 Ethnographic Pilot Report
Revision: FINAL v1.0
Authors:
Edel Jennings (Waterford Institute of Technology)
Reviewers:
Fred Truyen (KU Leuven) Roxnne Wynns (KU Leuven) Prof. Monika Hagedorn-Saupe (SPK)
Project co-funded by the European Commission within the from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration Dissemination Level P Public P C Confidential, only for members of the consortium and the Commission Services
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694
Revision History
Version Date Author Organisation Description No. 0.1 14/06/2015 Edel Jennings WIT Initial draft 1.0 26/06/2015 Edel Jennings WIT Final version addressing internal reviewers’ comments.
Statement of originality:
This deliverable contains original unpublished work except where clearly indicated otherwise. Acknowledgement of previously published material and of the work of others has been made through appropriate citation, quotation or both.
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694
TABLE OF CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ...... 5 1 INTRODUCTION ...... 6 2 VISION, GOALS AND INSPIRATION ...... 7
2.1 VISION ...... 7 2.2 GOALS: ...... 8 2.3 CULTURAL & HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES ...... 9 2.3.1 Irish Survey 1824 - 1842 ...... 9 2.3.2 Ordnance Survey of Ireland ...... 11 2.3.3 Official Governance of Placenames ...... 11 2.3.4 Logainm.ie ...... 11 2.4 INSPIRATION ...... 12 2.4.1 Translations - a play by Brian Friel ...... 12 2.4.2 Dúchas.ie ...... 12 3 IMPLEMENTATION ...... 14
3.1 INITIAL PLAN FOR THE PILOT STUDY ...... 14 3.2 IDENTIFYING & ENGAGING STAKEHOLDERS ...... 15 3.2.1 Schools & Students ...... 15 3.2.2 Senior Citizen Participants, The Tramore Family Heritage Group...... 17 3.3 CONNECTING WITH PROFESSIONALS ...... 18 3.3.1 Advice from an Architectural Conservation Officer...... 18 3.3.2 Interview with Dr. Aengus Finnegan ...... 19 3.3.3 Cuimhneamh an Chláir - a Community-based Oral History Group ...... 21 3.3.4 Interview with Facilitator of Tramore Heritage Group...... 22 3.4 INTERGENERATIONAL PARTICIPATORY MEETING ...... 25 3.4.1 Preparation ...... 25 3.4.2 The interview ...... 27 3.4.3 Editing the recordings ...... 33 3.4.4 Presenting the recordings for sharing ...... 34 3.4.5 Changing the scope of pilot to include Oral History ...... 34 3.5 INTERGENERATIONAL DIGITAL TOOLKIT AND WEBSITE ...... 34 4 FINDINGS AND CONCLUSION ...... 41 BIBLIOGRAPHY / ANNEXES ...... 45
4.1 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 45 4.2 ANNEXE ...... 47 4.2.1 Digital ReMap - Inter-Generational Toolkit For Recording & Mapping Placenames ...... 47 4.2.2 Civic Epistemologies ...... 47 4.2.3 Work Experience Placements...... 48 4.3 SAMPLE ITINERARY OF A WEEK’S WORK EXPERIENCE IN TSSG, WIT PARTICIPATING IN THE CIVIC EPISTEMOLOGIES PROJECT...... 49 4.3.1 Pilot Study Objective: ...... 49
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694
4.3.2 Goals: ...... 49 4.3.3 Benefits to student participants:...... 49 4.3.4 DAY 1 - Monday: AM ...... 50 4.3.5 Monday: PM ...... 50 4.3.6 Tuesday: AM ...... 50 4.3.7 Tuesday: PM ...... 51 4.3.8 Wednesday: AM ...... 51 4.3.9 Wednesday: PM – Interviews about Placenames ...... 52 4.3.10 Thursday: AM – Reviewing the Interviews and data management...... 52 4.3.11 Thursday: PM – Data Mining and Infographics, ...... 52 4.3.12 Friday: AM – Co-Evaluation ...... 53 4.3.13 Friday: PM – Final Documentation, conclusions and recommendations...... 53 4.4 TRAMORE AREA FAMILY HERITAGE GROUP MEETING PREPARATORY NOTES...... 53 4.5 TRAMORE AREA FAMILY HERITAGE GROUP - QUESTIONS FOR PART 1...... 54 4.6 TRAMORE AREA FAMILY HERITAGE GROUP PARTICIPATORY MEETING WEDNESDAY THE 5TH OF NOVEMBER ...... 55 4.6.1 “Student A” account ...... 55 4.6.2 “Student S.” account ...... 56 4.6.3 “Student C.” account ...... 56 4.7 WHY WE ARE CHOOSING ORAL HISTORY TO LEAD OVER PLACENAMES ...... 57 4.8 SHORT DESCRIPTIONS OF SELECTED AUDIO SNIPPETS FOR PUBLICATION BY “STUDENT C” FROM EDITED RECORDINGS ...... 58 4.9 RECOMMENDED/SUGGESTED META DATA ...... 58 4.9.1 Audio Interviews ...... 58 4.9.2 Video Interviews...... 59 4.9.3 Oral history related to places - audio snippets metadata ...... 59 4.9.4 Placenames Interview Metadata ...... 59 4.10 RECOMMENDED GUIDELINES FOR RECORDING INTERVIEWS FOR OTHER STUDENTS BASED ON EXPERIENCE [STUDENT B] ...... 59 4.11 LEAFLET PRODUCED FOR TRAMORE ACTIVE RETIREMENT AGM ...... 61 4.12 GOLDEN YEARS FESTIVAL ORGANISER PHONECALL PREPARATION NOTES ...... 62 4.13 BLOG POST FROM GAELCHOLAISTE PHORT LÁIRGE STUDENTS ...... 62 4.14 BLOG POST FROM DE LA SALLE STUDENT A ...... 64 4.15 BLOG POST FROM DE LA SALLE STUDENT B ...... 65
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This document reports on a pilot study for the Civic Epistemologies project, which explores whether teenage citizen volunteers could record valuable data related to Irish placenames and place-based heritage research, through conducting interviews with senior citizens. It outlines cultural and historical perspectives of placenames in an Irish context, tracing the history of mapping placenames from the first Irish Survey, through to digital placenames records available at Logainm.ie. We discover rich inspirations for place-based research with reference to Brian Friel’s Translations and the digitisation of the schools collections from the Irish National Folklore collection, which is itself an early example of a citizen led project at Dúchas.ie. We describe the identification and engagement of students, senior citizens and experts as a participatory network for the pilot project. The document describes in detail the work undertaken by the citizen students, from interviewing experts, to conducting a participatory meeting with senior citizen volunteers from a local heritage group. We identify the need for research and preparation prior to interviews, and report in detail on recordings made about place based stories, related to Tramore and Waterford, during the participatory meeting. We discuss the insights we gained from a quasi-experiment run, in conducting the interview both with and without supporting visual stimuli such as interactive maps and historical photographs. Access to copyrighted documents relevant to the place-based heritage research, for publication on the pilot website is discovered to be problematic. We identify this along with particular challenges for young people in time-intensive editing tasks and selecting audio segments for sharing. The rationale for the Intergeneration Digital Toolkit for Recording Heritage which was developed during this pilot is described – it comprises a default smart device audio recorder, free editing software – Audacity, free cloud audio platform – SoundCloud, and a wordpress website, complete with maps, and audio plugins created by the student volunteers. Finally we discuss our findings, on engaging with citizens for recording placenames and place- based history in the conclusions. There is a considerable amount of work in planning and orchestrating projects engaging citizen volunteers, and considerable care in relation to ethical factors should be taken with regard to vulnerable groups in society, such as the young and the old. Support from experienced experts should be structured into citizen-powered projects, and access to resources such as templates for consent forms, and codes of conduct. Additionally more formal agreements regarding usage of relevant copyrighted digital materials, such as old photographs, could enhance quality of citizen project outputs. The volunteer students, and senior citizens involved in the pilot study on place related heritage reported finding the experience enjoyable, indicating the possibility for extending this type of citizen science cultural heritage approach to future projects. This type of project is high risk and challenging. It does not guarantee production of quality cultural heritage archives but its foremost value may be in the creation of opportunities for meaningful intergenerational interactions and otherwise unlikely recordings to be made, that might not otherwise occur is rewarding, and may improve social resilience with communities.
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694
1 INTRODUCTION
We report in the following document on the pilot study on placenames conducted with teenagers, and senior citizens in Ireland, for the Civic Epistemologies project. The pilot study was conceived as an exploration in the potential to harness the current generation of teenagers’ perceived skills with everyday digital technologies such as smart devices, to record heritage about placenames, with senior knowledge holders within their communities. In section 2, we outline the vision and goals of the pilot project - to find out on one level. whether it is possible to crowdsource placenames research with teenage and senior volunteers, and at a more abstract level, if we can use cognitive surplus and the wisdom of the crowd socio- technical approaches not just to connect in virtual or online worlds, but to overcome a digital and intergenerational experience divide. We also present cultural and historical factors relevant to the study of Irish placenames, and place related heritage, through discussion of the Irish Survey, the Ordnance Survey of Ireland, the official governance of placenames in Ireland, the digitization of placenames at Logainm.ie, the play ‘Translations’ by Brian Friel, and the digitization of the Irish Folklore Collection at Dúchas.ie. In section 3, we report on the work that was done implementing the pilot study. We outline our initial plan related to engaging stakeholder volunteers, creating a digital toolkit based on freely available digital applications, doing some sample recordings, devising a methodology and inviting other students to use the digital resources we created as a template to generate further recordings. We describe how we approached and succeeded in engaging six Transition Year secondary school students - who participated as part of their work experience modules - and senior citizens actively engaged in a local heritage group to take part in this pilot study. We also report on our research with different experts in placenames, oral history, architectural conservation and community heritage, whose guidance we sought in developing simplified approaches for citizen powered digital heritage recording of placenames. We describe in detail the main participatory meeting between the student and senior volunteer researchers and give detailed insight into the content of interviews conducted during that meeting. We outline the work undertaken throughout an intensive three-week period of working with the students, also in editing audio segments, creating a website for sharing access to some sample recordings and inviting other students to take part. In section 4, we present our conclusions and findings, We discuss some of the main findings of our pilot, such as a requirement for ongoing networks between experienced professional humanities researchers and citizen volunteers, reusable templates for codes of conduct and consent forms. We discuss the potential limitations of non-professional researchers in managing aspects of the editing work, which requires mature reflection, without sufficient support. In essence we find that while there is great potential to extend the reach of research with citizen volunteers, citizen powered projects should be supported by networks of experts. Citizens surprise themselves that their work has merit and are eager to make meaningful contributions but they need structures to support and assist them. Experts we found were generous with their time and knowledge, and having their advice was critical in guiding the project direction and outcomes. We would advice having a more formal balanced inclusion of experts in future citizen science projects particularly to ensure quality of evolving methodologies, and providing evaluation on the quality of results.
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694
2 VISION, GOALS AND INSPIRATION
2.1 VISION The current generation of senior citizens - people from the age of 50 and over - have spent most of their lives in the pre-digital world before the internet and social networking global communication revolution, whereas the teenagers of today are digital native born in the late 1980’s, or early 1990’s have spent most of their lives immersed in the ever pervasive plethora of digital services, communications and entertainment. Whilst older people can remember life during the rationing of WWII and before electricity, and have witnessed and experienced dramatic political and cultural changes, which teenagers of today may only have read partially about in history books; young European people face current and future challenges unknown to earlier generations such as cyber bullying, cybercrime, climate change, global financial and ecological crises. Yet both these current generations have encountered common challenges too in emigration and austerity. Sharing lived experiences of seniors may also give younger generations faith in their ability to overcome challenges and build social resilience in communities. Doing this via a citizen-led approach democratizes the means of local place- based cultural production and consumption, empowering those who participate. Intergenerational heritage recording matches latent social and cultural resources for the benefit of society. Socio-cultural records of ordinary life in previous generations are thin - haphazard often scarce, reliant on official newspaper accounts, archives, and occasional family photographs; senior citizens personal recollections are a valuable cultural resource. In contrast, many teenagers of 2015 make thick cultural records - recording and sharing countless moments through photos, video, text on their phones, tablets or computers – on a daily basis; teenagers’ digital skills are a valuable culture-recording resource in society. Place-based intangible cultural heritage, as evident in placenames, oral history and stories of places, is a significant factor common across all generations, and this is one reason why it has been selected as a literally common ground on which to centre intergenerational cultural exchanges in our civic epistemologies pilot study. Participating in cultural history recording projects such as this assists seniors to appreciate the value and worth of their own personal recollections. Learning about how previous generations lived in ones local area directly through listening and conversing is a way to bring history alive, make it immediately relevant and enable young people to see their own position and potential in a longer view. Sharing stories and knowledge about place and language through research in placenames, gives participants access to the wider historical networks of memory; deepening cultural connections to the natural and built landscape, whilst also building social capital within communities. We have at this time an exclusive window to benefit from the digital expertise and familiarity of today’s youth with digital technologies - digital skills which make it possible for them to voluntarily gather knowledge from senior people living in their communities and preserve it for future generations, (often using only digital services that are freely available on their own devices). However, these two communities - teenagers and senior citizens, do not ordinarily mix frequently socially in the community. Teenagers aged 15-17, are busy with school, developing their own social lives and extra curricular activities, perhaps only interacting with a few older relatives at occasional family gatherings. Seniors too are busy in retirement, socializing, travelling, following their interests, sometimes busy supporting family with childcare, and some
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694 older people may also be managing health or wellbeing issues caring for themselves or another. Creating a context, where these communities could meet and make digital recordings, needs to be orchestrated if this is to happen. Developing a participatory citizen science digital humanities project to record heritage, provides a reason for people from these two different generations to come together and engage in meaningful conversations. Choosing to ask questions about place and placenames provides a universally accessible subject, and providing a clear methodology of steps for recording placenames and place-related cultural heritage shows both teenagers and seniors how to do this in an easy and straightforward way. Making audio recordings together is a controlled creative process that opens up a safe space for intergenerational sharing of knowledge, experience and insights that might not otherwise occur. Editing, and listening back to the recorded conversations enforces teenagers to reflect on what was meaningful, and how best to respectfully select and distill that content to be shared with a wider audience. Providing a digital space for presenting the audio segments selected for sharing amplifies the reach of the audio segments. Simplifying and defining the methodologies and inviting others to replicate the process in our intergenerational digital toolkit, enables crowdsourcing for recording place based cultural heritage; thus, harnessing the network effects of social computing, and creating the possibility for a snowball or viral effect in recording intangible cultural heritage. Thus each individual meeting between teenagers and seniors could be a contribution to a larger crowd- sourcing effort for the digitisation and digital preservation of the knowledge held by this senior generation before they pass. The vision behind the pilot project was to find out if we can use socio-technical approaches, not just to connect in virtual or online worlds, but also to overcome a digital and intergenerational experience divide. Could the ethnographic aspects of placenames create a context for meaningful personal intergenerational exchanges whilst also generating a rich collection of digital humanities heritage recordings, with first-hand accounts of notable events along with social descriptions about the unique ordinary lives of local people? The aim was to develop an intergenerational citizen science digital toolkit for cultural heritage, which could be used by teenagers, either in school or at home. This toolkit would support them in recording heritage with senior citizens. It would be comprised of social, cultural and technical information about: how to conduct interviews, record and edit cultural and ethnographic information related to placenames using freely available mobile apps, and web technologies. It would also manage and present that information about how to do the research, along with sample recordings, so that it can be found and used by other people. 2.2 GOALS: The pilot had a number of goals: To include students, elderly people, researchers, and digital developers in co-design activities, ensuring that all people involved are respected, and supported in contributing, appropriate to their skills and knowledge. To record older people’s knowledge, experience and understanding of placenames, sensitive to the unique and personalized value particular micro placenames may have for individual persons. To document the benefits and drawbacks of using digital tools to record this type of cultural heritage information.
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694
To document students’ experience of designing and using digital tools to participate in intergenerational projects.
2.3 CULTURAL & HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES The earliest record of geographical names in Ireland is found in the Geography composed by the Greek cartographer Ptolemy, Claudius Ptolemaeus of Alexandria, in about the year 150 AD, which mentions 47 placenames in Ireland, based on information collected three hundred years earlier by another Greek traveller, Pythaeus of Massilia (Marseilles). In medieval times, the Irish recorded the names in their landscape in the dind shanchas - a special literary genre in Irish focused on the ‘lore of notable places’ composed both of prose and poetry. The dind shanchas are worth mentioning as they “produced a cultural landscape that coded a reciprocal, vernacular relationship between a community and its environment, not imposed from outside or above but developed cumulatively, spontaneously, organically”. (Deane & Deane, 2010) Whilst roughly 90% of Ireland’s geographical names are of Irish language in origin; some names derive from English, and a few placenames derive from Old Norse. Despite Irish being the oldest written European language still in vernacular use; most Irish-origin place names occur in English written forms only due to processes of name-standardisation and anglicisation, which began with the Anglo-Normans in the 12th century. ‘A great deal of scholarly effort is required to establish the correct original forms’, according to a leading authority on Irish placenames - Donal MacGiolla Easpaig (Dónall Mac Giolla Easpaig, n.d.) who wrote that ‘anglicisation had the effect of shrouding place names of Irish origin in an impenetrable fog of unintelligibility’. Furthermore, MacGiolla notes that the dense heritage of registered placenames in the whole island of Ireland - which has about 67,000 administrative units including: four provinces, 32 counties, 327 baronies, 2,428 civil parishes, 3,750 electoral districts, and some 60,462 townlands, listed in the General Topographical Index - is incomplete. Many additional placenames of minor features survive in oral tradition, particularly in areas on the western seaboard where Irish language survives, some of which have been scientifically recorded by individual scholars. Irish Survey 1824 - 1842 The first large official survey of Irish placenames, known as the Irish Survey began November 1824 (“Ordnance Survey Ireland | History of Place names,” n.d.), (Gillian Smith, n.d.). It was conducted by the British Board of Ordnance, a military body responsible for mapping, for a total cost of £860,000. The survey was at a scale of 6 inches to one mile and Ireland was the first country in the world to be entirely mapped at such a detailed scale. The primary purpose for obtaining such a detailed mapping of townlands was to administer local taxation, which was based on the Valuation of Townland units. Each of the more than 51,000 townlands in the Republic of Ireland was named in Namebooks, used to record the placenames. These Namebooks are now stored in the National Archive. The officer in charge of the first survey was Lt. Col. Thomas Colby. Colby viewed the effort as a great civil and utilitarian venture, which could lead to information-based social reform, and help solve “the Irish problem”. He issued the following directions:
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694
“The persons employed on the survey are to endeavour to obtain the correct orthography of the names of places diligently consulting the best authorities within their reach.” “The name of each place is to be inserted as it is commonly spelt, in the first column of the name book; and the various modes of spelling it used in books, writings &c., are to be inserted in the second column, with the authority placed in the third column opposite to each.” “The situation of the place is to be recorded in a popular manner in the fourth column of the namebook.” “A short description of the place and any other remarkable circumstances relating to it are to be inserted.”(Andrews, 1975) Irish engineers, under the control of Richard Griffith, conducted a study of existing boundaries, known as the boundary survey. Ordnance Survey staff at that stage comprised of an elite corps of Royal Engineers, an ordinary corps - known familiarly as ‘sappers’ and ‘miners’, and civilians recruited locally. The work, which provided employment to many Irish people as skilled or semi- skilled fieldwork labourers, and as clerks, was undertaken with pride and care. Unusually the survey was expanded to collect additional ethnographic information about the “habits of the people” – food, fuel, dress, customs etc. - under the Orthographical, Historical and Antiquarian Department also referred to as the Topographical Department. This extended aspect of the survey was limited to Ulster unfortunately as it proved costly and was abandoned altogether in 1840 but the records are highly valued historical documents. Some modern scholars, notably Stiophan Ó Cadhla, (“Civilizing Ireland; Ordnance Survey 1824- 1842: Ethnography, Cartography, Translation on JSTOR,” n.d.) have described much of the language and descriptions in these records to be derogatory and racist. This reading of the survey memoirs and letters indicate they are best understood in the context of how Ireland and the Irish were viewed by the survey commissioners and authors - as a colony of inferiors requiring ‘civilization’ - in “developing ideas about social and cultural evolution fashionable in mid-Victorian Britain.” “Cultural customs and pastimes such as keening, card playing, cockfighting, and hurling were also formulaically dismissed as hallmarks of inferiority. They were condemned and rejected as 'vulgar traditions' and 'abominable amusements'. Seasonal routines of work and leisure related to fairs and patterns were equated with idleness and moral failure. Indigenous beliefs and magico-religious practices were similarly portrayed as 'superstitious simplicity'.” (“Civilizing Ireland; Ordnance Survey 1824-1842: Ethnography, Cartography, Translation on JSTOR,” n.d.) The Irish survey work, as analysed by Ó Cadhla, highlights the complex historical conflict between the values of the individuals doing fieldwork, and their superiors and the ongoing contradictions for scholars “who were both colonial ethnographers and a patriotic antiquarians”. However, noted Irish scholars John O’Donovan (author of the celebrated ‘Ordnance Survey Letters’) and Eugene Curry, worked on this ‘Memoirs’ project, designed to provide supplementary socio-economic data to illustrate and complement the maps, with the topographical department staff. They consulted with native speakers to collect Irish vernacular names whilst making the Ordinance Survey–their fieldnotes and letters. They, along with other scholars such as George Petrie, William Frederick Wakeman, George Du Noyer, considered the work on placenames as highly important - it was timely research on the Irish language in the face of rapid Anglicisation, and in addition it led to the initiation of rescue work on ancient sites,
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694 monuments and antiquities that were in danger of destruction or dispersal. Many scholars of the time expressed that their work with the Ordnance survey, in the spirit of the Enlightenment, helped them develop a source-based critical, scientific and comparative approach. Only one volume of the ‘Memoirs’ was published at the time, but after 150 years, the Institute of Irish Studies, at the Queen's University of Belfast, in association with the Royal Irish Academy, has published the Memoirs in full, in 40 volumes; and they constitute one of the most important sources for the study of Irish landscape, buildings, land-holdings and employment & livelihood of the population of the northern half of Ireland immediately before the Great Famine. This first Ordinance Survey aroused some local suspicion and opposition with segments of the Irish general populace, for socio-political reasons (Gillian Smith, n.d.). The Nation newspaper described the Ordnance Survey as ‘consistent with imperialism’ because it enabled the levying of taxes, surveillance, and military planning. William Stokes described how people in County Derry saw Ordnance Survey stations as military posts ‘to “spy out the nakedness of the land” and to mark the point from which the country below could be most easily commanded by artillery’. Occasionally the surveyors sought support from police and priests to restrain opponents, and had to work discreetly. Royal Engineers complained about interference with equipment, destruction of trigonometrical stations, and removal of surveying poles. However, in many cases memoirs also record surveyors socialising freely with the local society as they travelled the length and breath of the country recording boundaries and placenames. Ordnance Survey of Ireland The new Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland (OSNI) and the new Ordnance Survey of Ireland (OSI) were formed, after the creation of the Irish Free State in 1922. The OSI was overseen by the civil service until 2002 when it became a state body under the Ordnance Survey Ireland Act 2001. Central responsibility for OSI was transferred from the Department of Finance to the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources in 2008. Official Governance of Placenames The Placenames Commission was founded in 1946 to examine the placenames of Ireland. The Commission sought to research the Irish versions of placenames. The Placenames Branch was established on a full-time basis in 1956, as part of the Ordnance Survey. Since 1999, The Placenames Branch has been part of the Irish Government Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht. It is responsible for researching the placenames of Ireland and providing authoritative Irish language forms of those placenames. In 2013, The Placenames Commission was replaced by the Placenames Committee - an expert committee, operating pro bono. Future placenames orders will be made by the Minister of State following public consultation and on consideration of advice provided by the Placenames Committee. Logainm.ie Logainm.ie is the official website for the Placenames Database of Ireland. It was created by the Dublin City University based research group FIONTAR in collaboration with The Placenames Branch (Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht). This is a comprehensive management system for data, archival records and placenames research conducted by the State. The public website is primarily aimed at journalists and translators, students and teachers, historians and
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694 researchers in genealogy. The website has been enhanced by the inclusion of interactive Ordnance Survey Ireland (OSi) maps, using English and Irish versions of OSi's MapGenie Web mapping service, which links the dataset of the Placenames Branch with the dataset of OSi.
2.4 INSPIRATION
Translations - a play by Brian Friel “… it is not the literal past, the ‘facts’ of history, that shape us, but images of the past embodied in language.”(Peacock, 1993) ‘Translations’ is the title of a famous play by renowned playwright Brian Friel (Friel, 1981). Set in Ireland 1833, in the fictional town of Baile Beag (Small Town), it dramatises the activities, power relations and tensions that arose from the translating of placenames from the native Gaelic to English for mapmaking, by a detachment of British Army Royal in Donegal in the North West of Ireland. The translation process brings together two previously disparate communities, the local Gaelic speaking community, and the colonial British Army, and imagines the impact and effect on both of the process of mapping and related cultural shifts, whilst also showing the precarious role of the key translators and facilitators in forming both a bridge and boundary between these communities and translating the placenames for recording in an official Ordnance Survey document. Friel has stated that the play is primarily about ‘language’. ‘Translations’ was the first production of the Field Day Group, which was a significant cultural event when it was staged in Derry/Londonderry in 1983, with now well known film stars, then unknown actors such as Stephen Ray and Liam Neeson in the cast. This play is on the Leaving Certificate Examination (final school exam) syllabus and would be known to most Irish school- teachers and senior secondary school students. It provides an interesting inspiration for reflection on the complex socio-cultural factors related to our pilot study. Whilst the play illustrates the cultural significance of the translation of placenames from oral Irish culture into English written official documents, our pilot describes a citizen led process for the translation of oral culture about place into digital culture. The process of marking places in symbolic landscapes whether they are signifiers in 2D paper maps or digital audio files in the cloud, and on the Internet, has various significances and implications for the people involved with those places. Dúchas.ie The Dúchas project is currently undertaking to digitize the Irish National Folklore Collection, physically located at University College Dublin, which is one of the largest folklore collections in the world, and make it available to the public at large on a web portal. The current web portal in 2015 has three main categories: people, topics and places. The places section presents an interactive map wherein markers denote places where cultural records about Irish placenames and folklore related to geographical location are available. This site thereby allows open access to scanned pages from copybooks of written notes about placenames, and folklore made by schoolchildren based on interviewing grandparents and neighbours and collected by teachers between 1937 and 1939. These records, called ‘Bailiúchán na Scol’ or ‘The Schools’ Collection’, were generated as part of an effort to preserve and recover a distinctive and national Irish culture and identity, which was conducted by the Irish Folklore Commission in the 1930’s. As
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694 part of this project more than 500,000 manuscripts were collected from over 50,000 schoolchildren from 5,000 schools in the 26 counties of the Irish Free State were enlisted to collect folklore in their home districts, and with the cooperation of the Irish National Teachers Organisation, and the Department of Education. This is itself an example of pre-digital recording, pre-Internet, pre-social media sharing era, citizen led cultural heritage project. The digitization process is incomplete as of yet, and ongoing, but we were delighted to discover that the local area for our project, Tramore and Co. Waterford are areas for which records are available. The Tramore school collection entries were put together by a teacher in the Star of the Sea convent school, called Sr. M. Consiglio. This digitization process within Dúchas is itself also seeking citizen participation and support through the Meitheal Dúchas.ie (“Dúchas.ie: Meitheal Dúchas.ie (Crowdsourcing),” n.d.) - which is an initiative inviting people to take part in a crowd-sourced translation of Irish language records in the schools collection. (Meitheal is an old Irish tradition of shared labour, where people within a community all come together to share in the work at special occasions). Interesstingly when we showed the Dúchas site to the senior citizens later in this pilot project, some remembered the teacher and one lady at the Tramore Active Retirement group recalled taking part in the work as a child. Many people had not previously been aware of the Dúchas online resources and expressed that they were looking forward to exploring it in their own time. Witnessing this living connection between cultural heritage artefacts from almost 80 years also had an impact on the students’ attitude to the work they were undertaking in this pilot. The potential for a successful citizen science cultural heritage project to carry stories and knowledge through time demonstrated through the Dúchas project was genuinely encouraging in creating meaningful participant engagement in our own small experimental pilot.
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694
3 IMPLEMENTATION
3.1 INITIAL PLAN FOR THE PILOT STUDY A plan was drawn up for the pilot and documented in the Digital Remap document, which was used to introduce the concept of citizen powered cultural heritage work to schools, and students.
In the plan we identified three distinct phases to the pilot: 1. Design and development of inter-generational digital toolkit, based on existing digital apps and services in the marketplace. 2. Use and evaluation the developed toolkit in fieldwork interviewing older people recording placenames. 3. Presentation and dissemination of recorded data and final toolkit. Extracts from this document (available in its entirety in the Annex 4.2.1) are presented in the following emphasized paragraphs. Design and Development In the design phase we would like the Transition Year students to engage in participatory workshops with developers, designers and older people (possibly from local heritage organisations). Informed by the shared experiences and information, the students would then work to develop a digital toolkit for reaching out to elderly people in the community - grandparents and neighbours to record their knowledge about rural place names. The expectation is for the students on transition year’s work experience to work with us, in WIT, to define, design, develop, evaluate a prototype social and digital toolkit to facilitate recording and digitizing this knowledge which might otherwise be lost. This Digital Remap toolkit might for example consist of several pre-existing or customized smart phone applications, editable digital maps, photography, voice recording and video services. The social aspect of the toolkit would consist of guidelines on interview processes, ethics, data privacy and security issues. Use & Evaluation In the field trial and evaluation phase, the Transition Year students go out and interview older people in their communities, and use the inter-generational digital mapping rural placenames toolkit which they have developed to capture and record the knowledge held by this community about place names. They will note their observations about the use of the toolkit using user experience design and human computer interaction methods - i.e. such as an experience map to record how they feel about using the technology in social situations. In an ideal scenario they may even be able to roll out the toolkit to a wider group of students and older people to gather more data as in a social workshop event setting. Presentation & Dissemination of Results In the presentation phase they translate their findings to digital records, with the support of developers from WIT and the project partners, following data management guidelines to ensure that they are findable, secure and retrievable. They record the results of their
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694
engagement with the tools and discuss their findings in a focus group. The results from the pilot will be reported in deliverables for the Civic Epistemologies project, and may also form part of papers or articles for academic journals, conferences or general news media. 3.2 IDENTIFYING & ENGAGING STAKEHOLDERS Citizen powered projects like this that seek to engage people to participate on a voluntary basis, need to dedicate a lot of time and preparation to the engagement process. Having a clear engagement proposition, which considers how different types of people could benefit from involvement and participation, is essential. This meant in this case trying to view the proposed pilot from the different perspectives of schools, transition year students, senior citizens and experts in the field of placenames, oral history, community cultural heritage, and architectural conservation. We considered what factors might motivate and interest people, and tried to incorporate them into a broad ranging vision, which we initially labeled “Digital Remap” – a name which changed over the course of the project into the “Intergenerational Digital Toolkit for Heritage Recording”. As it was quite an experimental project we also sought inspiration from within Irish cultural heritage tradition, and in particular from the Dúchas.ie project and website, which was a rich resource for this pilot. We identified the need to seek advice from academic and official experts in placenames at the commencement of the project. We succeeded in establishing relationships with the following placenames, history, and oral history experts: Dr. Aengus Finnegan – Logainm placenames researcher Ristead UaCróinín – Architectural Conservation Officer, Clare Co. Council Maxine Keoghan – Historian, founding member and facilitator for Tramore Local Family Heritage Group. Cormac McCarthy – Vice Chair, Executive Committee of Cuimhneamh an Chláir We decided to approach teenagers through schools. We contacted several schools in the local area to Waterford and decided to offer unpaid work placements to students who were interested in participating in the project to allow them to have time to focus on the work required in developing the pilot. We also contacted local heritage groups, which have senior members, the Active Retirement Group and a Golden Years festival organizer to seek senior citizens who would support us in designing the digital toolkit for recording heritage. Schools & Students Secondary Schools: In order to connect with teenagers interested in participating in this pilot study we decided to approach schools local to Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT) who had transition year programmes and ask teenagers on the programmes to participate in the project. Connection via the schools was both the best way to ensure legitimate access to this sector/cohort of society who are under 18 and need stringent ethical aspects to be considered. We contacted several schools in the Waterford area, and followed up with phone calls to the Transition Year coordinators. We discovered that phone calls were more effective than email when trying to reach this target group. One school was interested enough to find out more about the project but declined to take part as it had already organised work experience places for all their TY
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694 students. Another did not respond at all. As part of this outreach activity with schools we compiled a Digital Remap document plan and a sample itinerary of a weeks work (c.f. Annex 4.2.1 and Annex 4.3)
We contacted the following schools during this pilot project: Gaelcholaiste Phort Láirge (www.gcpl.ie) – The staff and students in this Irish language school, (where education for all subjects is conducted through the medium of the Irish language), were very interested in the project and agreed to participate - three students worked full time on the project over two weeks, a forth student joined for one week. De La Salle College – They approached us seeking work experience due to an interest in history and digital technologies and were eager to be involved in the project – two students worked full time for one week. Newtown College – This school declined to participate after careful consideration. Discussions with their Transition Year Coordinator were helpful and useful in focusing the approach for working with students. Ardscoil na Mara, Tramore - No response. One Transition Year Coordinator indicated that while the school would have had to be informed many months previously to fit the project into its planned activities for the TY year. The timelines for accessing secondary school via project work can be long in order for teachers to verify the activity as suitable and consider how it might fit the national curriculum subjects. It does not match easily with the timelines for EU projects where the project funding is often only agreed a few months before the project commencement date. Fortunately, the concept of the placenames and intergenerational recording of cultural heritage was sufficiently interesting to two schools TY coordinators to share it with their students, and four students from the Gaelcholaiste PhortLairge, and two from De La Salle applied to participate. We extended our initial plan to accept them all. Three students from Gaelcholaiste Phort Láirge came to WIT for two weeks work, Week 1 and Week 2. These three students took part in the intergenerational participatory meeting in the first week, created a flier inviting people to come to be interviewed, selected technologies for recording and editing, and edited audio segments. One other student joined these three for Week 2, making a team of four. This team worked very well together and succeeded in continuing outreach work to senior citizen groups, conducting interviews with experts, setting up the initial technical structure for the website, and writing much of the content for the site. Two new students came on Week 3, and worked with initiative and enthusiasm to complete the project. They finished design elements such as logos, solved mapping bugs, did additional editing and tagging of audio segments, whilst also contacting libraries and museums seeking clarity about access to maps and photographs. Each of the six individual students brought a unique interpretation and insight to the project. They embraced the pilot project as it was proposed to them and took ownership of their roles in its implementation, going beyond the requirements of work experience placement. In some cases, the students also created audio recordings in their own time with relatives to supplement the projects’ recordings, and test the proposed guidelines.
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694
Senior Citizen Participants, The Tramore Family Heritage Group Finding senior citizens who were willing to participate in the project was essential to the feasibility of this pilot study. However we discovered that connecting with older people in the community requires sensitivity and flexibility, and ideally leverages pre-existing relationships to establish trust. Many older retired people are busy with social lives, hobbies, supporting families and some are challenged managing care of others or health issues. It is too easy to assume that retired people are ‘free’ to volunteer in this type of pilot project. In addition, the recollections, information and place based cultural material collected from senior citizens is often the fabric of their personal memories and lives – it is personal to them and must be treated with the utmost respect. It is equally essential to ensure that people from this group, some of whom may be vulnerable, have all the intended future uses of the recorded material, privacy and written consent aspects fully explained. This is also why in this pilot we proposed that ownership of the audio files remains with the interviewer, (who we propose will in most cases be related to the interviewee). This means that family relationships and knowledge can guide what information is shared publically from interview, and control how the conditions and extent of that sharing, even facilitating removal of audio segments if that is preferred at any stage. We contacted the following groups to engage with senior citizens during this pilot project: Tramore Local Family Heritage Group – This group participated in preparation, interviews, and discussion about the project. Tramore Active Retirement AGM - Welcomed us to present project at their annual AGM where we invited members to participate in follow-up interviews, but no one came forward to be interviewed perhaps because we had only a few limited days identified available for interviews. Golden Years Festival – We contacted the organiser who was supportive but felt that the social noisy atmosphere of the festival would not be suited for interviews. The Tramore Family Heritage Group is a self-established voluntary unfunded group, which formed to work on a local history project and had created an open social space where people interested in telling and sharing stories gather. Tramore Cultural Development Limited is the umbrella group that has set up a local Heritage Group where interested local volunteers collaborate on significant occasions and events, such as WWI remembrance events, bringing speakers on cultural heritage to the town, organizing a heritage trail with signposts through the town and facilitating the set up and running of the Tramore Local Family Heritage Group. Access to the group and opportunities to engage with the senior citizens in the Heritage group for this project, was only feasible through leveraging preexisting trusted relationships within the social networks and community life of a local seaside town in Co. Waterford – Tramore. One of the group’s founding members is Maxine Keoghan - a historian who understood the significance of recording local stories with the group to collate valuable heritage for future generations. Maxine’s previous experience working in community support roles and as a local politician enables her to reach out to people on the one hand, whilst on the other hand, her knowledge about heritage and policy has guided the development of the group. Maxine kindly agreed to meet and discuss the potential for cooperation with Civic Epistemologies’ project with the Irish pilot project’s coordinator and subsequently offered to come to the Waterford Institute of Technology to discuss the intergenerational project with the teenagers on work experience. Meeting with the teenagers prior to the participatory meeting including the Heritage Group members was a necessary step to establish understanding and trust, and a prerequisite to CIVIC EPISTEMOLOGIES Deliverable D4.1 Page 17 of 66
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694
Maxine agreeing to act as broker between the project and some senior citizens within the group. It was emphasized from the outset that there it would be essential to ensure respect would underlie all interactions with seniors from the group. 3.3 CONNECTING WITH PROFESSIONALS The student group sought the advice of several professional experts on this particular place based cultural heritage. The students conducted a telephone interviews with Dr. Aengus Finnegan, a placenames researcher working in FIONTAR in Dublin City University on Logainm.ie, the official web application for placenames created in cooperation with the Placenames Committee and the Irish Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, and also with Risteard UaCróinín, the Architectural Conservation Officer from Clare County Council, Ireland. (Both these experts outlined a similar methodology for placenames, involving initial library-based research, to become familiar with local historical maps, and boundaries before referencing more modern ordinance survey maps for fieldwork. They described the research required as “detective work,” in terms of finding and identifying the senior knowledge holders to be interviewed within a local community who may have unique placenames information but may not realize it. Both interviewees emphasized the importance of acquiring audio and phonetic recordings of the local spoken pronunciations of placenames, as this can be significant in deciding the linguistic derivation and making sense.) Cormac McCarthy, from Cuimhneamh an Chláir (Clare Memories), a community-based voluntary oral history group, also provided practical advice for quality audio recording and editing, and ongoing support throughout the project. When Dr. Maxine Keoghan met with the teenagers, she advised the student group about empowerment, the importance of setting-up a well prepared physical space with the right number of seats, the cultural significance of tea and hospitality, preparing and practicing questions in advance, and managing consent forms. She shared insights about her own recording experiences and the ‘out of control’ feeling when an interview goes tangentially completely off topic but can yield ‘nuggets of gold.’ As secondary school students these teenagers had no experience of conducting research or interviews so they had to consider who might be able to help, and prepare specific questions for each person and find the courage to send an email or make the call. Surprising to the coordinator is that while they use mobile applications and texting to communicate with each other, they were less familiar with email for formal communication. The students supported each other as a group, and they entered into the new activities with determination to find out more about how to record placenames. Advice from an Architectural Conservation Officer Risteard UaCróinín is an Architectural Conservation Officer with Clare Co. Council. He has written passionately about placenames, in a Placenames Conference held in the Burren in the West of Ireland in 2003, wherein he describes himself as an interested amateur in researching placenames. He described placenames as a “non-renewable” resource, and called for ordinary citizens to become engaged in the process of collecting placenames.(“Clare Places and Placenames: The Importance of Placenames - Risteard UaCróinín,” n.d.).
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694
“Better to have this record made poorly than not at all. Standards, resources, criteria will no doubt come in time but by the time these are put in place it may be too late. I would respectfully urge each interested individual and group to start work immediately in their own area with the help of our schools and senior citizens. If resources are needed we should encourage local businesses to provide the sponsorship. But as we all know this is a labour-intensive undertaking with little financial input required to do it well. This is a work not always best done by professionals. It is a labour of love and love is the most important skill and resource required.” (“Clare Places and Placenames: The Importance of Placenames - Risteard UaCróinín,” n.d.) He offered several examples of Irish placenames as repositories of clues to otherwise inaccessible heritage. Corca Baiscinn, West Clare (Past Civilisation) Translated as “The Land of the Basques”, it refers to a possible Basque settlement, which may in time be verified by science. (D.N.A. etc). Killaspuglonane, Liscannor. (Linguistic Corruption) Without the translation (Cill Easpag Fhlannáin: The Church of Bishop Flannan) this name is nonsense and much past knowledge is lost. When the students called Risteard UaCróinín to ask for advice about collecting placenames from people in the community, he spoke to them about the importance of doing fieldwork and taking audio recordings, from local people, ideally from families who had lived in an area for a long time, not just because they would have extensive local knowledge of the topology of the area but because he explained that the pronunciation of a placename could be very significant in deciphering its meaning. Therefore, he stressed that the interviewer should not say the name but wait to hear it – as a different emphasis on a syllable could completely alter a placename interpretation. The pronunciation of a placename, passed on through the local communities through generations, could be the key to unlock the heritage within. He compared the fieldwork for placenames to ‘detective work’, explaining that key knowledge holders in placenames might not be aware of the wealth of information they hold. He suggested that not all interviews are equally valuable – and that often people who worked on the land such as farmers or dealt with people who did, such as vets, might have more access to micro placenames. He advised taking an approach of ‘major to minor’, starting a placenames interview with asking questions about easier or well-known landmarks in a locality and then moving on to minor features in the landscape. Interview with Dr. Aengus Finnegan We identified Dr. Finnegan, as an expert candidate, because of his wide knowledge and expertise in recording placenames. We exchanged introductory emails and arranged an interview. On Friday the 7th of November the students and pilot study coordinator conducted a phone interview with Dr. Aengus Finnegan at Logainm.ie. The teenage students who spoke with Dr. Finnegan were pleased to find he was “helpful, kind and generous” in sharing his expertise. Dr. Finnegan is a Research Editor in FIONTAR, DCU and is working on the various projects currently ongoing at FIONTAR (logainm.ie, ainm.ie, focal.ie etc.). He conducted his doctorate research on the townland names of two baronies in Co. Westmeath.
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694
We asked if all the placenames are now gathered on the logainm resource and if they are aware of any other non-official placenames that are recorded but not included? He answered that they are not of the opinion 'that all the placenames are now gathered on the logainm resource'. The logainm.ie is primarily a database of administrative names (townlands, civil parishes, baronies, electoral districts, town & village names, street names). The database also includes some names of natural features, minor area names and many other placenames, which fall into various categories. However, many such placenames have not yet been added to the database, whether recorded elsewhere or not.
He informed us of several projects ongoing to collect such 'non-official' placenames of which Logainm is aware citing several examples:
http://www.louthcoco.ie/en/Services/Library/Louth_Field_Names_Project/ http://www.meathfieldnames.com/ http://ncg.nuim.ie/content/projects/donegalplacenames/ http://www.placenames.ie/
He also mentioned the Placenames of Northern Ireland Database: www.placenamesni.org. He added that the Placenames Branch has engaged in the collection of placenames and local pronunciations of placenames from the public in the past and continues to do so.
Dr. Finnegan advised us on the following method to use when collecting placenames. Initially, one should begin by examining Ordinance Survey maps and place Namebooks, which could be found in the local libraries. Being familiar with local maps and locations is essential a priori to going out to do fieldwork and interview people on the ground. He recommended that we get copies of maps from local libraries before fieldwork, and plot the areas to research onto those maps to use for fieldwork. He said that fieldwork in a necessary element to placenames research as not all people will recognize or recall placenames from looking at a 2D map. Some people will only recall a name when physically located in a particular area; when the placenames investigator is present she can ask about a particular feature in the landscape such as a hill, wall or field, by pointing it out. These features are often either more difficult to identify and distinguish clearly from nearby features on a map. He described how he often went out in a car and drove around the area being researched with local landowners, getting out to walk the land across to landmarks.
He suggested that farmers are often good interviewees for placenames research as they work the land. Once interviewees are identified he told us it is important to take their biographical details - name, age, address and occupation fields are important. Additionally it was significant if they were born and still live in the same place. From his experience, interviewing people who have lived in the same place forever is the ideal scenario. The average length for a placenames interview is between 10 minutes and 30 minutes
He indicated that he felt sometimes the start of an interview could be difficult. Sometimes it is necessary to hint and prompt for personal information informant interviewees have on areas, as they may not consider it valid or ‘official’. He suggested initially asking interviewees details about places where they live before then moving on to surrounding areas, and topographical
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694 landmarks. He stressed also that it was advisable to go from the major to the minor information - from town lands, hills, rivers, streams, field names, to fairy rings and ring forts.
He emphasized that it is very important to make audio and phonetic written recordings of local pronunciations for placenames, as this can be significant in later interpretation where similar sounding words can have different derivations. In his opinion, the history of town and city place names in Ireland are somewhat neglected as people doing research tend to focus on rural areas. If built features of places have been demolished, he said we should still record it and represent it, preferably along with documentary evidence such as a photograph.
When we asked about the significance of folklore and other ethnographical information related to place, he said whilst he could understand there were correlations, placenames research was a distinctive field. For that reason, he advised us to present oral history and place names separately.
Cuimhneamh an Chláir - a Community-based Oral History Group Cuimhneamh an Chláir(“Cuimhneamh an Chláir, The Clare Oral History & Folklore Group,” n.d.) was established in 2009 as a voluntary organization to digitally record, archive and share the memories, folklore, traditions and oral history of county Clare, through interviews with the county's oldest citizens. From January 2010 to April 2014, they documented the life stories, memories and folklore of over 530 of Clare's oldest citizens, amounting to over 600 recordings and almost 2,000 hours of audio with people aged 65 – 106 (fourteen over the age of 100). In total, over 110 of those recorded have since passed away. They are guided by the understanding that once lost the memories of our elders can never be retrieved and by the aim: “Gealaimid go ndéaneoimíd ár ndhicheall ar son muintir an Chláir chun oidhreacht chultúra an chontae a chaomhnú agus a chur chun cinn” (which translates approximately to mean that they pledge to do their best on behalf of the people of Clare to preserve and promote the county’s cultural heritage). They have received numerous awards for this work.
Mr. McCarthy spoke about the need for sensitivity in seeking permission to record, the need for written consent, and the importance of setting up good interviewing situation, both socially and environmentally. This group has a policy of training all volunteers, as cúairteoirí (visitors), and tries to conduct all interviews in the Irish tradition of a friendly neighbour visit in the home of the interviewee. The interviewees are nominated by people in the community - there is a feature on their website that allows a site visitor to propose someone for an interview. If the interviewees agree to take part, then a date for an interview is agreed. The interviewees are given the questions, approximately a week in advance of the interview date, to allow them ample time to prepare what they wish to say in advance. The subject of the interviews varies with the individuals but is generally structured around personal life stories. The interviews are conducted usually in a ‘one-to-one’ format, which just one voice answering questions. Whilst, the interviews are loosely structured around a list of pre-prepared questions they believe in allowing the interview to “go where it’s going to go”. The cuairteoirí (visiting interviewers) try to ensure that there is a suitably quiet place available for conducting the interview, taking care to agree a quiet time with people who may be working nearby, and make provisions to avoid interruptions by background noise such as barking dogs or loudly ticking clocks.
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694
The group uses bespoke recording devices to ensure excellent audio quality, and recommended following this approach if possible. They stressed the importance of checking all equipment prior to the interview and using an AC adapter for the recording device if possible. Wonderful interviews he warned could be impossible to listen to if the quality is not sufficient.
Each interviewee is photographed as part of the process, and this provides an additional contextual resource for presentation with the audio recordings. The audio recordings may be over an hour in duration. They recommend only interviewing one person at a time and to avoid group interviews as in their experience the audio quality decreases with an increase in people present. A copy of the interview in its entirety is presented back to each individual interviewee or a family member. A copy is kept in the organisation’s archives.
Short segments from the interviews are then edited for sharing using a creative commons copyright on the group’s website. They use Audacity for editing. Additionally some segments have been made available to listeners via audio walls. These audio walls are located in situ in local museums and cultural heritage sites, where a selection of audio segments from the interviews illustrating local traditions and customs are accessible to visitors and tourists. They are beginning to use some video segments and observe that people generally are more accepting of video being taken in the social media age.
Interview with Facilitator of Tramore Heritage Group. The groups formation, empowerment, and the groups representatives in the project, were discussed during the students interview with Maxine Keoghan. Some of the key salient points from these discussions are synopsized in the following section.
Formation and Emergence The group was initially formed with the goal to record one hundred years of family histories from 1911 to 2011, from examination of the 1911 census for Tramore and surrounding areas. A call for people whose ancestors lived in the local area in 1911 was publicized and an open meeting was held in the restored Coastguard Station during Heritage week 2013. Seniors in the community who are interested in heritage, community and stories joined the group.
Meetings & Social Inclusion It was decided to set up a weekly group meeting in the local community centre, to research and record local family histories. These task-orientated and administrative activities were the main focus for the group for the first six months to a year. In addition Maxine as a historian began recording stories with some of the people who joined the group. The group has just two main principles, which have allowed the group to grow into something more. The first principle is to always welcome people with free tea, coffee and biscuits. The second principle is that the group would be based on empowerment of the attendees and senior citizens themselves. The weekly meetings became a space, where people interested in local family history and places could gather together to talk and listen, and be heard. It has emerged that the group’s gathering also provides an important social function serving an unmet need within the community - establishing by expression of that first principle “all are welcome for tea” an CIVIC EPISTEMOLOGIES Deliverable D4.1 Page 22 of 66
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694 unstructured open space for seniors in the community to gather and socialise. Whilst there are many other groups in the locality this one has attracted a loyal membership. It became apparent that some senior people were experiencing increasing social isolation within their communities just at the time of life when they had more capacity for reflection and sharing. One of two family members had observed that their parents or older relatives were being ‘accidentally marginalized’ – as the lives of their younger families and neighbours were busy and there was not always as much time to share stories, as there were stories. Whilst some senior citizens in the community were experiencing insights and understandings, having time to recollect on their lives, it seemed as though too often those around them were too preoccupied and busy to listen. The group’s primary goal acknowledges the significance of recollecting family histories, and thus is fundamentally always a place where reflections and stories are welcomed and valued. This key social function of the group proved so successful that the group, which initially came together to record family histories based on the 1911 census, has stayed together and expanded. The seniors in the Tramore Local Family Heritage Group are now also extending their focus to other interests, outings, events and activities. The group has evolved to become something more than was at first envisaged.
Ongoing Research & Recording Activities within the Group From the outset, audio recordings of interviews - conducted with individuals and small groups of people about local heritage, traditions, history and customs in a side room or visiting in their houses - was a usual activity alongside the group’s gathering. In contrast to the Cuimhneamh an Chláir approach, often people were interviewed together or in a small group. The group dynamically encouraged the natural conversation and reminiscing. Video recording was also introduced as a camera was offered to the group. Full written consent is a prerequisite for all interviewees. These oral histories were initially being recorded to enrich the work on family history project. However, the subject of the recordings naturally extended to include a wide variety of topics, as people being recorded followed different story threads and tangents. The initial history project now has extensive but incomplete oral recordings from the group members and further recording is ongoing. However the facilitator now regards the local Family History over one hundred years as a separate distinct project, to the oral history project that is evolving. She describes recording stories that hop from the Metal man (a Tramore landmark) to London and back, as life journeys and time unwind forwards and backwards, through the interviewing process with the group. These informal and people-led digital recordings are rich but were described as very difficult to edit (which is significant to consider in relation to recordings for this pilot). Sometimes people may reveal sensitive information within an interview with a trusted person and the interviewer needs to be able to recognize these segments and know how to manage them. The historian facilitator spoke about the discomfort that comes with being ‘out of control’ with the free interview process, and the responsibility to mind the recordings. Whilst a segment on London may not be significant for her project, it may be in time valuable to that person’s family. She identifies a need to preserve and archive the recordings. In time the ambition would be to set up a cultural heritage centre in the town, where locals and visitors could access the recordings. However the need to carefully and sensitively manage the editing process and curate recordings to ensure they are all respectful to the participants is the primary priority and challenge.
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694
The significance of the recordings is understood from the historian’s perspective as, whilst “the lives of the great, the good, the powerful and affluent are often publically recorded in newspapers, meeting minutes, and official documents, the quiet lives of ordinary people and their social history has often been missing from historical accounts”. She observed that the weakest in our community are not recorded often and that this is particularly true of the generation that is now elderly. When this generation pass-on, all the information that was not considered worthy of official documentation regarding food, sanitation, housing, religious traditions, habits and customs will be lost. Religion is singled out as a subject that has caused the most contentious arguments, and upset people in the group. Thus some traditions that are embedded within this generation remain, are difficult to impart, are not preserved and are not passed to the next.
Sharing Heritage: Valuing the Stories. Valuing the stories and information shared is often an empowering process for the group members. People did not feel their ordinary knowledge was worthwhile or valid to record prior to being in the group. The recording process has authorized them to share information they didn’t think was important or of interest to anyone. Founding an atmosphere of empowerment and trust within the group is regarded by the historian/facilitator as an a-priori essential aspect to the sharing and recording of good information. Giving oneself to the process of recording is identified as a way to move beyond assumptions, which might otherwise lead away from interesting information. She spoke about ‘finding gold’ amongst the hours of footage and having a lifetime without time limits to go over the recordings. The Local Family Heritage project hopes and plans to share their work via the development of a Tramore Cultural Development website where some digital video or audio recordings can be shared directly but also where material gleaned from recordings can enrich more general articles about sensitive subjects, such as Tuberculosis (TB) or mental health without ever identifying the individuals whose stories informed the writing. The group itself communicates mostly via phone calls and the weekly meetings. Whilst Tramore Cultural Development Limited has a Facebook page, access to resources for digital expertise and development costs has delayed the creation of a website to date, in 2015.
Empowerment. The group is managed by the seniors themselves, who take responsibility for all decisions regarding activities, and set their own agenda for what is discussed on a week-by-week basis. People in the group come from all walks of life and have had very different experiences of repression or success in their lives. Demonstrating in word and action, that they are sharing power amongst all the members and attendees is emphasized as a very important factor to develop the mutual respect and support within the group. It is necessary for sufficient trust and safety to be felt within the group itself, to enable individuals to speak confidently and in confidence about their own life stories and lived experiences. Only those who choose to share their stories do, and some people choose not to share their own stories, and that is completely fine. The group now also organizes different activities, events and outings. They describe their approach as structured but also completely non-structured, as the group sets its own agenda, on a case-by-case basis and people opt-in and decide their own interaction patterns with the
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694 group. Arguments, we were told, do arise occasionally, but there is a shared understanding of passionate discourse within the group – that people will only argue if they really care about something. A caring community has developed within the group where they would check-up on someone if they missed one or two sessions. Health and frailty are mentioned as concerns within the group.
Participants in the Meeting Three senior citizens from the Tramore Local Family Heritage group volunteered to take part in the participatory meeting for this project - recording heritage about placenames and places with the teenagers from Transition Year on work experience in TSSG. These seniors, two men and one woman, were identified as being confident, engaging, having experience of recording and being happy to do further recording. At the same time, it was indicated that not everyone in the group would be happy to meet up or be recorded. Some people regularly attend the weekly group gatherings but choose to never talk or be recorded. On the day of the meeting, John and Noel came with Maxine to WIT to meet the students and take part in the participatory meeting. The lady was unable to attend.
3.4 INTERGENERATIONAL PARTICIPATORY MEETING
Preparation A participatory meeting was held, over three hours, on 5 November 2014 in the Waterford Institute of Technology. This allowed both volunteer citizen groups to experience intergenerational interviews, explore possible methodologies, gather sample recordings, and discuss emergent issues. The participants included: three students, two seniors, one heritage group facilitator, and the pilot coordinator.
Setting The meeting took place in TSSG, in Waterford Institute of Technology’s Carriganore Campus. Locating the meeting in a locally well-known but official place was significant in leveraging the trust that the third level institution has within the wider regional community. The room used was the ideas room where the students were working for the week. It has a large table and the correct number of chairs required for all attendants were pre-arranged around it. This room has a large screen, which was used in the second half of the meeting to display historical orienteering maps and photographs from the Waterford Country Museum website. The room also has large floor to ceiling windows on one side that overlook the rural landscape and the river Suir, which provided a topic for conversation and reflection on the role of landscape in heritage.
Recording technology The device used was a Samsung Galaxy phone. The audio recording software selected was the default audio recorder on the phone. Several other free audio applications had been considered, however as many of these have a limited time allowed for recordings it was decided they would not be suitable. While the students did all have phones, not all of the phones were high-end smart phones and they elected to use that device which was provided by the researcher at TSSG, WIT. CIVIC EPISTEMOLOGIES Deliverable D4.1 Page 25 of 66
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694
Questions The students had pre-prepared a number of questions about places, folklore and placenames. A sample of these questions is available in the Annex 4.4
Maps & Photographs The ordinance survey maps both historical and current were accessed from the Ordnance Survey Ireland website (www.osi.ie). The OSI have a MapGenie service for all schools that can display OSi’s large scale maps, aerial photography, historic maps and Discovery series for the Republic of Ireland. This web-based service is accessible from all schools on the Schools Broadband Network, however this is was not available to this pilot as we were not based in a school location. We used the OSI map viewer web application, which gives free access to browse, maps and aerial orthophotography. In preparation for the meeting the students selected and zoomed to an area around Tramore town and locality. This tool enables one to layer and flick between maps, which include modern streetmaps (scale: 1:2000), aerial photography (1995, 2000, 2005) and various historical maps (scale: 6 inch). The students looked for differences notable in streetnames and landmarks marked on the earlier and later maps, about which they wanted to ask questions. MapGenie was a very useful tool in helping to visualize and focus the research on a particular place and show the change in use over time. A subset of photographs related to Tramore town, mostly selected from the archives displayed online at the Waterford Country Museum website (“Waterford County Museum,” n.d.) had been bookmarked for viewing with the senior citizens. All images are marked with a copyright watermark across the centre and also have a copyright mark in black at the bottom right margin stating “© Waterford County Museum and/or Respective Owners”. We wrote to the museum to request access to the photographs for our website and project, but received no feedback. Another researcher told us informally that there is a costly charge for reuse of each image. This indicates that access to heritage material for ordinary citizens engaging in research that would be enriched by digital reproduction of some material from official historical archives is sometimes prohibitive.
Quasi-experiment As the digital resources of online maps and photography exhibitions were available and easily accessed in the selected site for the meeting, and the students themselves had found them so useful in sharing understandings about how placenames are used, it was decided to try and include them in the participatory meeting. However, during the interview with the local heritage group facilitator, she had expressed reservations about this approach, anticipating that the large screen presentation might be over- stimulating and distract the participants into a consuming culture mode and away actively talking about personal place based recollections. We decided to do a practical quasi-experiment to test whether pure audio based interviews were more effective or interviews that referenced the supplementary web-based applications for maps, photographs, placenames, and folklore.
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694
The interview Initially the interview began with the confirmation of audio consent for the recording to take place, and then the students began with questions related directly to placenames. One interviewee, John answered briefly about the origins of the placename for “Tramore” as a direct reference to the “TráMhór” (big beach) near the town. He shortly afterwards stated that while he knew some well-known translations he wasn’t very interested in placenames.
Family business, country and urban boundaries One interviewee, John, began to talk about his family originally being from Waterford, and their family business as butchers, had a yard and slaughterhouse in the back they used to keep cattle and pigs. He described a delicacy of tripe (a meat cut from the cow), which is rarely eaten anymore. He spoke about the location of his family home, naming neighbouring families, Larkins, Ryans and Mooneys, who all washed, scalded, scraped and sold tripe. He made reference to farmlands near the now Baillinaneesagh graveyard then owned by his family, from where he remembers driving cattle and sheep down the road into the city on market day, recalling an incident when a cow went into a woman’s little house. He left school at 16 (the same age as the students) and went to work with his father. He spoke about the shifting of the boundary where the countryside began when he was a boy, from Slievekeale Road and “Paddy Brown’s long road” and the change he witnessed in land use from agricultural land to urban use, saying “And in my life, I’ve seen it change so.. so… so much. It’s city now whereas in my day it was country… people are becoming more urbanized…”. They said while they remembered placenames they didn’t know their origins. Noel explained during the course of the interview that he was born and brought up in Tramore and had been living in the same house there for 86 years. He speaks about his brother who died in the war. He also speaks later in the interview about his work in the printing business.
Transport They spoke about an old road known as “the green road” at one time, which they describe as “now swallowed up”. It went from Tramore to Ballinaneesha and ran under the Waterford Tramore railway. This led into reminiscences about the old steam railway line (built by William Dargan Company in 1853 and operated from 1855 to 1936 - it was the last single locomotive in regular traffic in Great Britain and Ireland), which then changed to diesel, and was closed in the 1960’s, that ran a single track between Tramore and Waterford, and not connected to any other railway line. They described it was slower that 20mph. Each carriage was individual and different groups of people ‘more-or-less’ claimed ‘ownership’ of different carriages. Business people sat in the same seats at the same time everyday. Noel recalled how when he went to school, the first person aboard the train from each of the different schools – Newtown, Waterpark and Foy’s school (which Noel attended), would hang a uniform cap on the carriage doors “and they (others from the same school) all piled in”. There was a goods car so people could easily transport their bikes. John spoke about all the carriages that were added to the line in the summer and regretted that it was not still operating as it would they felt bring tourists to the town. Noel has always lived near the railway and he described games he played as a boy dropping stones into the chimney of the train, and laying half-pennies on the track to be flattened into ‘pennies’ doubling the value that could be used in the slot machines in Tramore amusements, which the students thought was a ‘good idea’. This story of mischief led to
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694 laughter and the atmosphere between the students and seniors relaxed. The students were surprised to learn that the train was the only means of transport during the wartime. The men spoke about how everything was delivered by horses at that time. Noel recalled the bread van. They remember milk delivered by horses until after the war. John was born in 1934 and there was no petrol available during the war, and only 3 cars in the area. They had ration cards for everything, a book and stamps. Clothes were limited along with butter tea and other to what was in the book. One doctor in Tramore had a big American car, a Hudson Terraplane, and had petrol. The two Dickensons, one of whom was the director of Portlaw tannery had petrol, because leather was essential. Some cars had a gas burner that had to be lit in the morning until the coke burned and gave off gas. They recall a car with a balloon “like a quilt on the roof” filled with gas to drive the car. John told in great detail the story of an August evening when the late ‘sea train’ had so many carriages it couldn’t stop and went through the wall at Tramore and ‘landed out on the road’ near where Sand’s hotel is today. It was clear this was a story they had previously told within their heritage group, and the incident is famous locally, as dramatic, although fortunately no-one was hurt although the area was busy. He didn’t see it happen himself but was there shortly afterwards. Noel described how the following day the train was jacked-up, pulled back onto the tracks and turned on the turntable. The engine wasn’t damaged. Noel also recalled another train crash at Carrickalong in 1934. John decried the demise of the Tramore Waterford train in 1960, and its sudden closure along with other tracks was due to an economizing effort to slash the costs of railway transport, by a politican called Mr Andrews. It was a decision inspired by Dr Beeching’s drive to economise by closing railway lines in the UK. The Tramore Waterford line was closed suddenly one Saturday night, even though it had been making a profit. (The tracks were lifted by early 1961 and said locally to have been shipped to Nigeria, while sleepers were used in coastal erosion defense structures. All that remains is the unpreserved station house). The double decker buses that were first sent down to replace it, Noel remembered, had been geared for Dublin, and couldn’t manage the hilly terrain of the seaside town. They went on to explain how when the railway first came to Tramore, in order to encourage people to live in the area, the state train was used to transport free of charge goods and building materials for people to build houses. Noel explains that Tramore has always been a dormitory area for people working in Waterford, which always had a transient population. People commuted in on the train, came back for lunch at 12:30, and 1:30, and returned to town for the afternoon at 2:00 and 2:30, before coming back home again in the evening. They recall when there were no taxis but jarvey cars. The jarvey cars were horse-drawn high side cars with seats at either side where the driver sat up high driving the horse. Noel recalls how they would arrive from Dublin, with the horses on the train for Tramore race week, which lasted four days.
Sport and Recreation For sport and recreation, the men recall there were football, cricket, and hockey teams for men and hockey for women. The student interviewers were surprised to learn that there were several local cricket teams, as this is no longer a sport widely played in Ireland. One student queried if they remembered road bowling from those days, an activity which is now practiced in Fenor a nearby townsland, but John and Noel say this tradition was not native to Waterford, but comes
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694 from County Cork. John recollects his father recounting going to a Cock fight, and that there was a great deal of betting going on there. They had no television but a radio that came on from around 5pm until 11pm. John said Radio Eireann usually played serious classical music and they heard no rock, until Radio Luxemburg was available, which along with a AFM station for the American Armed Forces in Europe broadcast from Germany introduced them to modern music. John recalled getting married in 1961 and paying £26 on hire purchase over three years to get a new transistor radio. “We thought it was the greatest thing”. His income was under £10 a week at that time. All electronics were terribly expensive – he compares this to the first mobile phones. They recall who had the first mobile phone in Waterford like a milk carton with a big long aerial, and car phones. He mused about future technologies: “What will be in 20 years time? … There’ll probably be a chip in the back of your head and you’ll go in to be reprogrammed. …To dial a number, you’ll probably just have to think of it and it’ll ring…”
War There was a big gap associated with the years of the Second World War. John described the shortages. He came from a large family and sugar from every child’s ration book was saved for Christmas. Oranges and bananas, which had washed up on the shore, brought great excitement when they found them as children, and the fruit was eaten with delight. They recall excitement over the first chocolate for sale in Tramore, and the disappointment when it turned out to be made without sugar. John and Noel recounted an incident one Sunday morning when a German bomber came in over Tramore and two spitfires chased it in over Tramore bay, with the ‘whole of Tramore’ watching. It crash-landed down at a farm in Carrickalong, and all of Tramore followed it out to see what happened. A farmer went out to meet the crew and gestured to bring them in for breakfast. When the armed forced arrived armed with guns they were told they were in the kitchen. The eldest of the crew was a 22-year-old pilot. The rest were only 18 or 19. No-one was hurt except for one broken finger. John said it must have been a horrific experience at ‘that hour of your life’ to be caught up in a war. Noel noted that most air-crew were between 18 and 21. His brother, Charlie was 19 when he was killed three weeks after the war ended. His plane crashed on take-off during flight training when he was being prepared to be sent to Japan. His parents had his body repatriated and he is buried in the churchyard in Tramore. John recalls older lads who went off to war from Tramore, many of whom never returned. A lot of families around Tramore had lost older boys to the war. He recalls a man killed in Amiens. There was no college and very little to do. University was just for the professions like solicitors, vets and doctors. Civil Service or the guards were attractive professions. Only six from his class did the leaving certificate. Many children at the time were hoping to get an apprentice.
Emigration John estimates 50% of the boys from his class had fathers in England working and they followed them over. He recalls families, near him, where people emigrated and never ever came back. He talks of his own five children who have emigrated. A student says its funny how “50 years ago people were leaving and not coming back and now again people are leaving again”. John said we’re “a wandering nation”. He tells a story of meeting a local from Tramore by chance on a boat in New Zealand.
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694
Festivals A fancy dress parade took place at the end of the summer John recalled. Noel suggested it was to extend the tourist business season in Tramore. Many people from nearby counties came to board or take a house for a holiday in July or August. They say they made friends from other places who came to Tramore on holidays when they were young that they still know today. Noel recollects that there were two sessions in the dancehall in Tramore, each Sunday evening: one from 8pm-11:30pm and a second from 12am-2:30am. People often went for a swim or ‘skinny- dipping’ down by the pier after the dance. The amusements came to Tramore with a man called Johnny McGuirk who had a flying pigs ride, quite similar to the airplane rides they have to this day. The group begin to discuss the social life of teenagers today. The senior citizens say they had no money when they were young and the teenagers say they have no money now either.
Work They talk about the school leaving age. Many of the senior citizens’ contemporaries would have left school at 14, after a state exam, and others left to take up trade apprenticeships. The printing trade had a 7 year apprenticeship. Printing at the time was all done with lead and many people got lead poisoning as a result. The print was set out by hand. Noel worked in Crokers, printing office. Printers they explained were busy as every business had letterheads, billheads, envelopes, receipts etc. Croakers, where Noel worked, printed over 85% of the butter wrappers in Ireland at that time. He recalled they bought a Timson rotary press, which you fed a reel through, which could print two colours. He recalls the manufacturer’s names of machines they used and the transfer to reel-to-reel printing. Benhils made most of the butter packing machines. Forgroves made most of the margarine wrappers. He recalled, Kustnors from Switzerland manufactured another excellent machine but one which required fine tuning.
Folklore The men laughed when asked about folklore, then recall a story about a ghost lady rumoured to haunt an old well in Tramore which leads to another story about a different well whose water could cure warts. In closing the first session, the students ask about the history of particular shops premised in Tramore town and the interview subject turns to the recollection of a little shop owned by Jimmy Stubbs, who was a cobbler, and his little premises in the town which was a talking shop where men would gather in the evenings to tell stories, and sailors who could read the weather.
Description of interaction of participants during the meeting The students intervene in the discussion to ask some questions, at different points related to their notes (see Annex 4.4) in the interview. The men draw each other out in conversational tangents across the interview, which is akin sometimes to eavesdropping on a social interaction. The initial formality and slight awkwardness of the meeting between the teenagers and the seniors who are both equally estranged in the context of the Institute of Technology meeting room, following the procedures for getting and giving consent, and initial introductions melts away, as the group is woven together through recollections, questions and listening. Occasionally the sound of a teacup being placed on a saucer can be heard in the background audio. The atmosphere is warm on the audio recording. The interviewees stop at one of two points and wonder aloud if the students are getting the material they want – they want to give
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694 useful information. The students wait for natural lulls to lead off on new questions. They later say that having been told by Maxine, that this might happen, meant they were not worried that the interview did not follow a predicted format. They were glad to get such varied interesting material. Some of the students were clearly particularly interested in hearing the more dramatic stories about the train crash and life during the years of the Second World War. Speaking to someone with firsthand local experience made it tangible and real. The colour and personal knowledge and detail in the interviewee’s stories brought them a new understanding of the changes their local area had undergone. There were some poignant moments during the interview notable when they talked about people who had died in the war, or emigration. Emigration was a subject that had impacted on the interviewees at various stages in their lives and in their own families, and is still a concern for young people now. A simple lunch was organized in the same meeting room, which kept the group intact for casual chat in-between recording sessions.
Introduction of Stimuli to Interviews In the second part of the meeting cultural heritage digital artefacts were shown. We were interested in finding out how the interviews might change with referencing maps, photographs, and websites.
Interactive OSI Maps The second recording session began with the group looking at the OSI maps. The maps clearly focused the discussion on specific aspects related to the town. They discussed the gasworks, which has arrived before electricity and the Barnett family, which ran the gasworks. The audio files indicate that the maps were very useful for focusing the interview on specific places, but they are sometimes more difficult to follow without the corresponding reference materials, so perhaps a video might be a better medium for recording this approach using stimulus. John indicates Doneraile Place where he was born. He points out a house where he used to live. He also tells the students about the Hydro or seaweed baths, which were once an attraction in Tramore, and similar facilities have been restored in other locations, but unfortunately the hydro building in Tramore has been demolished. They talk about the poor houses marked on the old town map, as somewhere were once people ‘on their last legs’ went but now have been transformed into attractive comfortable supportive-living homes where people are eager to get a place, as they have someone to call on at any stage day-or-night and it is secure. John and Noel become excited pointing out changes to each other on the historical maps. John notes that the Prom (the promenade by the sea), which has always been there in his life-time is not on historical maps. They point out the Ladies Slip and the Mens Slip - traditionally culturally segregated bathing areas for men and women by the beach. The interviewees are animated and direct the students to navigate to different areas on the map. They discuss a new road currently being built to the sand hills, and recall cottages that were once located at the sand hills. People who lived there, including Jimmy Stubb’s father, fished and collected cockles on the back strand, which John remarks was a regular diet at the time. They explain that the prom in Tramore has changed a lot during their lifetimes. It was lower and only lifted up (above the beach level) in the last 20 years. Noel indicates where the ‘Funland’ amusements run by Sparks and a garage run by Reddys were once located near the prom. They explain that land near the sea had been drained by a group of soldiers known as the Construction Corp, (referred to
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694 locally as the Destruction Corp) who had been camped near the sand hills for training during the war. Noel indicates a restaurant which was used as an officers quarters during the Second World War. The current location of a tourist caravan park was the site of an army camp at the time. They explain that the Irish army was bigger then. Noel suggests people saw young men joining the army as a way to keep them out of trouble. John contemplates that young men were attracted to the army at the time of the First World War because they had no jobs and didn’t have much else to do and it seemed glamorous, but that ‘they had been sold a pup’. Noel tells them his father’s brother was killed in the First World War and his own brother in the Second World War.
Photographs The students show them a selection of photographs from the Waterford County Museum. One of the Prom shows old bathing boxes (circa 1940). John explains that three women managed the bathing boxes, which were hired out to bathers as dressing rooms. A woman named Dolly Chapman had three or four bathing boxes, which ladies could hire to protect their modesty while changing into bathing costumes. Noel explains that originally (circa 1890) some of the boxes had wheels and on occasion could be wheeled into the sand near shallow waters so ladies could step directly into the sea. The bathing costumes of that time covered a large area of the body more like the wetsuits of today they think than swimsuits. Other ladies in the same business were Mrs Moll Kent and Mrs Mary Roche. A lady would come along and say “Can I have a bathing togs?” and when she had used it she gave it back and it was dipped in a bucket to rinse and then handed out to the next customer. They look at a coal ship that had beached on the strand around 1975 and remember the incident as more recent. The look at an old photograph of Brady’s buses, which they fondly recall came to Tramore every weekend as few people had cars in those days. The all agree that Tramore racecourse hasn’t changed much. A photograph of the old Atlantic ballroom leads them to explain that is now a building for an amusement arcade. Noel laughs and recollects how people sometimes snuck in through the bathroom windows to avoid paying. They flick over and back through the photographs and remark on the changes to the town over time. Often the structure has remained but the usage of buildings has utterly changed. They admire an old photo of Stubbs shop. The interviewees even think they recognize the people in some postcard photographs from the 1960s. Finally the students show the interviewees the Tramore entries (“The Schools’ Collection » Star of the Sea Convent, Tramore,” n.d.) at the Duchas (“Dúchas.ie,” n.d.) web site. John thinks his sister may have been taught by Sr. Consiglio, who compiled the Tramore section. They would have liked to have had more time browsing this site and indicated an interest in returning to it in their own time. Using the photographs and maps evidently helps all the people at the participatory meeting, focus and share understandings of how the same places have changed at different time periods. However while a researcher with reference to the same images and maps viewed can with repeated listening make sense of the discussions and discern information imparted, the audio files independently would only make sense to people very familiar to the area. Therefore we suggest that while stimuli like maps and photographs can support recollection, and clearly was enjoyed by the interviewees, they should be used with caution, and preferably with video recording, which also captures visually the items discussed.
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694
Closure of meeting Noel and John were exceptional interviewees as they have wonderful memories and could present the information expertly. They said they enjoyed taking part in the meeting and discussing places with the students. They hoped it was useful. They spoke about how some people have a great ability to recollect people’s relationships and family connections over the generations. They were supportive of the citizens being involved in making recordings about ordinary life and creating archives for the future. All participants were chatting freely as the meeting came to a natural close. Editing the recordings The two recordings were captured from the two parts of the participatory meeting. The first is approximately 1 hour and 5 minutes in duration. The second is approximately 45 minutes long. The students spent the following two days listening to the recordings. They identified key segments, which they found interesting, also guided by their own recollections and notes from the making of the recordings. The editing process was challenging. We were trying to condense it to take less time, but it was none the less necessary to do some basic logging to enable finding and selecting clips. Deciding which clips were most interesting was difficult as there was so much material. Two students took the lead and managed this task, working in parallel to identify and export audio segments. They learned how to use a new tool Audacity as they worked with files locally. At the end of the first week they had cleaned the audio files and exported a collection of 11 sample audio tracks of segments, most of them less than a minute in duration, to share on the website. Taking segments out of a conversational interview and trying to understand if they still make sense and are intelligible out of context is challenging. Some of the comments from the interview were interesting to the teenagers as they gave insight into the social norms and opinions at the time about sensitive subjects - like mental illness, which might in todays context seem wrong or controversial. But these segments did not make sense out of context and were finally not shared publically in this project as they could be misconstrued. This indicates that potentially difficult subject matter can arise in interviews even about subjects that appear to be relatively ‘safe’. Therefore we recommend that young people receive support and advice from adults and ideally experienced humanities researchers or journalists, when finalising a selection of audio segments. Additionally, while the time available for the students work experience did not enable a second meeting with the interviewees, to review the audio segments in the case of this pilot study, we suggest that this step should be included in the methodology whenever possible in future iterations of similar citizen led recordings. We believe engaging the interviewees in the editing of clips would enhance the final selection for sharing. Two students did elect to conduct interviews on their own in their own time with a senior family member. One student collected several recordings specifically about placenames related to the Faithlegg and Cheekpoint area. Another made recordings in both Irish and English about personal recollections related to historical events, such as the burning of a shop because the name was in Irish, and refugees staying with the family directly after the Second World War. They both reported that it was easier as it was with a family member and they had gained confidence having done recordings during the participatory meeting in WIT.
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694
Presenting the recordings for sharing Once the recordings were selected, the next steps were to test the methodology through further interviews, and create a website. We contacted other senior citizen groups to try to organize further interviews, including presenting a short introduction to the project and visiting Tramore Active Retirement AGM with leaflets inviting people to contact us to be interviewed (See Annex 4.11) Changing the scope of pilot to include Oral History The nature of the recordings which had very little to add to information about placenames but were rich in local oral history and knowledge led to an editorial decision within the group to expand the subject of the citizen led pilot to include place-based oral history. Whilst this meant straying from the original plan, it was the clear that the ideal placenames research methodology involved a lot of fieldwork, and travelling around the countryside, which was not feasible for two reasons. Firstly - the students were underage, did not have driving licenses or cars to travel around, secondly - we needed to be careful to fully respect child protection recommendations, and thirdly the seniors who wanted to participate in the project while very knowledgeable about a range of other matters and local places, were not particularly interested or knowledgeable about placenames. The students outlined the following rationale for extending the pilot scope: 1. We found that finding out about oral history is more achievable than placenames 2. We found the oral history more interesting than placenames 3. We also found that oral history is unrecorded as opposed to placenames which has been recorded by websites such as logainm.ie 4. Most people have more information on the oral history of their areas from stories as opposed to placenames 5. We only have a short period of time so the oral history is more feasible 6. The process for placenames are very scientific 7. It requires the following of a scientific process which people receive training on 8. We want it to be Transition Year students so it has to be an easy simple to follow process 9. From speaking to experts we found that not everybody would know a lot of information so not every senior citizen would have a lot information (if any).
3.5 INTERGENERATIONAL DIGITAL TOOLKIT AND WEBSITE The Intergenerational Digital Toolkit is the title we have given to the set of digital applications, services and tools selected for use within this project, and recommended for use for future expansion of the recording heritage with teenagers and seniors. It consists of audio recorder, audio editor, audio file portal for exchange and sharing, a website for presenting files, inviting participation, advising on approaches, sharing tips, and blogging about the experience of recording. It is described on a website created by the pilot project to present the sample recordings, share the approaches taken, and invite other citizens to
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694 participate – http://heritagerecording.tssg.org/.(“| A Revival of Oral History and Logainmeacha Recording,” n.d.)
Audio Recorder – Default on participants’ own device We recommend the use of the default audio recorder on smart phones, or tablets. Whilst some oral history groups, like Cuimhneamh an Cláir, strongly recommend using a dedicated recording device for interviews, to ensure good quality audio, and avoid a scenario where a great interview proves difficult or impossible to share due to poor audio quality – in our experience the default recorder on most modern smart phones, or tablet devices is perfectly adequate for the task. We promote the usage of the smart devices default recording application as this we believe will lower the barrier to participations. Lowering the barrier to participation is one of the key elements to developing a successful citizen science or civic participation project. The ubiquitous smart device is unthreatening and easy to use in its familiarity both for novice interviewers and interviewees. While there are a range of specialized audio recording applications available for all platforms, both IOS, Windows and Android, many of which are free, we discovered that several pertaining to be free to use had limitations on file size, which could lead to recordings being unknowingly truncated during an interview so we therefore recommend avoiding them, unless participants are using ‘full’ versions and have tested them for file size in addition to quality. Generally audio files generated from the audio recorder are easy to transfer to a local laptop for editing and sharing, whilst some audio applications only save files to a cloud service.
Editing Application - Audacity Once the audio file in its entirety is recorded, it usually needs to be edited. The editing process involves repeated listening to the interviews. Whilst professionals would usually follow a process that would include identifying themes, logging, and transcription for editing of audio files, we think that this process may be too involved and time consuming for a majority of teenage students, and might put them off taking part. (It might be possible to foresee future similar projects where another group of citizens is involved in volunteering to undertake the transcription part of the work). Therefore we simplified this to listening stages and do not include transcription, one listen for content and to identify interesting parts, taking note their location; two, listen again in and confirm segments to be used to identify clips for sharing, and copy out these segments from the whole, three, listen carefully to segments and edit to enhance quality, four, export selected segments of audio clips for sharing with other services. Again there are many audio editing tools available but at the time of doing this pilot, Audacity was recommended as one of the best options. We used this and found it to be both flexible, usable, and well documented, and therefore would recommend it. Audacity is a free software, developed by a group of volunteers and distributed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). It is available to download at SourceForge (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/). Audacity has many flexible features for both recording and editing and is capable of handling many different file formats. It enables one to easily import sound files, edit them, combine files, and export recordings in many different file formats - including multiple files at once. Whilst the Audacity editing tool is relatively easy to learn how to use for the basics - editing is non-the-less a time-consuming task. The reasoning, and judgment required to decide which clips are most usable, interesting and worth sharing puts the editor in control, and this can be
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694 challenging for young people. The subjective element in this process means that some interesting material may be lost in this process, and therefore it is this step above all others which we think would benefit from having experienced humanities scholars available to advise or provide guidance. A story whose subject matter, which might be very interesting or topical, may also be somewhat controversial or likely to raise strong opinions. We recommend that a teacher or group leader is required to provide support and guidance to the students in making their selections for sharing and publication to protect them from possible negative criticism. In our pilot, only the students were involved in the editing process. Students made their own decisions about which clips to select and share – and this was the part which they found most challenging in the project. They felt a sense of obligation to serve the memories and stories shared well, and were concerned that inclusion or omission of particular stories or opinions might offend either the interviewees or others. In future variants of similar activities we suggest that the seniors themselves, and or other family members may be involved in the editing process.
Cloud Storage and Sharing Application - SoundCloud We used a cloud based service to upload and save the audio file snippets from the interviews for sharing called SoundCloud. This is a streaming service, a distribution platform and an online community. SoundCloud has a free version, which we used for the project, which allows a limited but relatively large 120 minutes of audio files to be uploaded and shared. It provides for some privacy options such as private, sharing with friends or sharing with everyone. These options allowed us to set up a system where the interviewee retained control and ownership of their own recordings, and with whom they shared the links to those recordings. It allowed us to have a workaround where we did not copy the interviewees files onto a central cloud server owned by the project - the data ownership and permissions for access and usage of the files on an established cloud sharing service like SoundCloud we assumed were rigorous legally. In addition the service is broadly used by the teenage demographic and the ease of use of its interface, and support offered were also attractive when designing citizen led activities. This type of adaptable cloud self-service, which is established and has a large number of users appears more reliable, and stable for broad intermittent use than a bespoke customized small cloud solution, which would be unfamiliar to target user groups. SoundCloud offers quick social media logins, potential to tag comments anywhere within a track, analytics of tracks accessed, and importantly a very useable exporting embed option which provides HTML code for a mini player to use in a website. Additionally it provides a feature, which allows one to create a playlist of tracks as one waveform that can then be embedded as a whole file.
Website - Wordpress Wordpress.org was chosen as the preferred tool to quickly generate a flexible website using free templates in a short space of time that could easily incorporate the features required. TSSG agreed to host the site for the pilot project. The cost for site hosting and domain name registration would be required for future similar projects.
Information Architecture The information architecture for the website was drawn up using an approach known as Card Sorting. Headings for the different types of site content planned and envisioned were drawn up on post-it notes. These were then organized into groups firstly on the floor and then on a
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694 whiteboard. The groups of post-its showing categorized information were given an overarching label, and then the labels were ordered to define the sites main navigation links. Cross-links between many various information sections were then considered and also included. Once the navigational and page structure had been decided the pages were created.
Access to historical photographs and copyrighted resources The students would have very much liked to show images from the Waterford County museum (http://www.waterfordmuseum.ie/exhibit/web (“Waterford County Museum,” n.d.)) - which is a wonderful resource providing access to a wealth of old photographs - on their own recording heritage website or use sections from embedded maps from the OSI such as those used on the official placenames site logainm (www.logainm.ie). But the museum did not respond to enquiries for usage and other researchers told us the cost for copyrighted images would be prohibitive. Similarly access to the official ordinance survey maps with layered historical maps would be costly. This meant that no historical images were available for use on the site. This matter raises an issue for future consideration in the synching-up of citizen led projects with official institutions and services run with commercial aspects, as the output from the citizen volunteer work would be significantly enhanced if access to such services could be legitimately and transparently improved beyond making resources available on their own website to extending permissions for particular and considered usage by citizens.
Plugins Features required for the website were: inclusion of integrated social media links throughout, interactive maps with links to audio snippets, clear navigation elements, attractive slider with links to featured content. WordPress offered various options for template theme designs and plugins, which facilitated including both the social media and mapping elements into the site. The students tested several free templates before settling on Catch Katmandu by Catch Themes (catchthemes.com/themes/catchkatmandu). We decided to use the GoogleMapsReady plugin (https://wordpress.org/plugins/google-maps-ready/) to show a map in our site, as it was easy to use to mark places associated with the audio recordings. We used the SoundcloudIsGold plugin from the mightymess.com developers to present the audio snippets shared on SoundCloud. In most cases a student was tasked with doing a short technology review to justify the selection of a particular plugin. The following is an example of a plugin review.
Student Report on ‘Add This’ plugin for WordPress “This plugin really stood out from all the other social media plugins due to it being so easy to setup, really user friendly to anyone visiting the site, not being too cluttering, and having support for sharing to lots of social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIN, and many email host’s too.” A general overview of using plugins from the student perspective was also captured in this student report: “Installing plugins in WordPress isn’t too hard, it’s really straight forward, but there can sometimes be issues such as conflicts that can render all of your widgets completely useless until you find the culprit of the error. There is a lot of support available online both from
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694
WordPress and the widget creators. Though it is probably worth checking if support is ongoing from the widget creators and only selecting plugins that are actively supported. When you have logged into WordPress dashboard go to the in the plugins tab in the admin menu, click “add plugins” and search for whatever you may need, someone’s bound to have made one before. Then when you have selected a widget to try. Click “install” and configure it in your widget settings. You may want to take note of what plugins you download and in what order just in case there are any conflicts between add-ons, and then falling into mass havoc trying to fix the problem.”
Logos and design One student working in the final week of the project focused on design elements for the website. We considered the presentation of the methodology for citizen engagement and guidelines for participation to be part of the pilot project. The recording heritage logo went through various iterations before a final logo was designed by one of the students. It references Reginald’s Tower - a noted heritage site in Waterford city. It also features a red button to reference the recording button on audio recording applications. The students came up with the following tagline to introduce the project with the logo - “A revival of oral history and logainmneacha”.
Figure 1: Final logo for the Heritage Recording website
Figure 2: Addition graphics for the website for “listen”, “map”, “news” and “take part” were also created by the student.
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694
In addition to the website the students generated social media presences and accounts in Twitter and Facebook, which were linked into the main website.
Figure 3: The Heritage Recording website generated for the pilot project. The creation of a Heritage Recording website(“| A Revival of Oral History and Recording,” n.d.) was a key output for the pilot study. It had two primary functions, to showcase the audio segments from the interviews conducted during the course of the pilot project, and to provide a call to action for other schools and teenagers to replicate the place-based cultural heritage recording work. It includes guidelines on how to set up and conduct oral history interviews, and simplified approaches to conducting placenames research interviews. It also features a map-based interface which provides an alternative means of navigating the audio clips based on geographical references within their content. This feature proved technically challenging to implement, with several different approaches tried before succeeding. It also raises a number of issues which exemplify how categorizing data for this type of project is not straightforward. Should the audio clips be linked to the place where the person interviewed now lives, lived at an earlier time, or to the place or places referenced in the audio content? Where should the meta-data related to the audio clips be published and stored? For practical reasons we used the established web application SoundCloud to store the audio clips and therefore also used that service’s metadata elements, to provide dates, and keywords associated with the clips. This approach is dependent on the continuation of this independent service. Generating a bespoke online database cloud solution for the interview and ethnographic audio segments with a distinctive metadata structure was considered. A list of data attributes desired is available in the annex. However, due to time constraints other work
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694 was prioritized for this pilot. Finding a clear solution to managing file storage, respectful to agreed privacy permissions with the projects participants, and suitable creative commons licensing, from the outset, would be advisable for similar future projects. We wanted the pilot to create a citizen science project template that could have a daisy chain structure that allows more students and senior citizens to easy adopt the project structure and generate follow on contributions to link up together. The website demonstrates how this objective could be met fairly successfully, however we were limited by time and resources constraints from really testing the potential to create a network effect by extending the project to use within other schools. Also it would be beneficial to seek feedback on whether the quality of the samples already generated during the pilot is sufficient from an expert perspective. We think with some tweaking the approach developed during this pilot study could be extended and enhanced for more widespread use and hope to have the opportunity to do this in the future.
Dissemination. We have been lucky enough to present the project at the Digital Enlightenment Forum 2015 in Kilkenny, Ireland, and also had an opportunity to present the project to the Irish Minister for Skills Research and Innovation who expressed particular interest in supporting such Intergeneration projects in an educational context in the future. We will also present a paper based on this pilot project at the Cultural Heritage Communities: Technologies and Challenges workshop during the 7th Communities & Technologies 2015, 28 June, in Limerick, Ireland.
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694
4 FINDINGS AND CONCLUSION
Planning work with an unknown quantity of two different groups of citizen volunteers without a prior commitment to participate in a project is challenging. We found that the schools and students did not respond until very close to the commencement of the students’ work experience, and suggest that it would be better to seek agreement to work with particular schools several months in advance. Also while the senior citizen groups were open to considering engagement and eager to contribute; as they are composed of individuals with varied commitments and activities, agreeing schedules can be tricky. This is compounded by the fact that whereas some of the senior citizen groups we contacted usually meet in the evening out in the community, the teenage students aged between 15 and 17 usually expect to do these activities within the school day. Having clear documentation about the projects’ vision and proposed work for engaging with the citizen volunteers is needed to explain the participation proposed to prospective volunteers. We prepared three distinct documents to support engagement – a Digital Recap document, which was the invitation to the secondary schools and their students to participate; a sample itinerary of a week’s work experience, and a leaflet on heritage recording for dissemination to attendees at the Tramore Active Retirement AGM. This requires detailed project definition and planning upfront from a project coordinator of a citizen science for humanities pilot study, which is time- consuming, and limits somewhat the potential for cooperative project definition and goal setting. In an ideal situation, the participants would be fully engaged in the project definition and planning. Additionally as the citizens in this pilot study are comprised of two vulnerable groups in society, particular care needed to be taken with ethical issues. We found that the pilot being linked to a well-known trusted organization - the Waterford Institute of Technology leant the project credibility in the local community, which made engagement with groups easier. Trust, clear privacy policies, well formed consent forms, and security are required to assure people taking part that their personal privacy is being protected. This is quite difficult to manage as digital technologies are increasingly difficult to gauge for privacy and security factors. There is a balance to be struck between privacy, trust, documenting, sharing and connectivity. Each individual must make her or his own decisions about what is acceptable to her or him to share, of course vulnerable people should be supported if they want or need further information about the potential extent and implications of sharing information online. This Irish Heritage Recording pilot project attempts to share this power by asking the interviewees to retain ownership of the audio files, and by only sharing access to snippet of them via links provided by the interviewees to the cloud service – SoundCloud – links that they can remove access to at any time. The heritage recording website retains the power to disconnect and not publish access to any SoundCloud files submitted by users with unsuitable content. These factors mean that while the Irish pilot coordinator wanted to share power with the pilot project’s citizen participants, quite a lot of decisions had to be made at the outset before any volunteer participants had signed up. A comprehensive written consent form is required which clearly outlines the project aims, intentions and the planned usage of all data collected. One must ensure that it meets the requirements for the particular group one is inviting to engage with citizen led activities. In the case of underage people, for example, the student’s guardians or
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694 parents must also sign the consent form. Additionally when working with younger people the researcher needs to be aware of the potential for power relations imbalance within the group. Recording information and stories shared from the personal recollections of seniors also presents challenges. Trust and an openness of communication needs to be established in a short space of time if the recordings are to be worthwhile for both interviewer and interviewee. We think that drawing up general codes of conduct for mutual respect between all participants in all project interactions, would be useful to establish the outset a tone of respect. It would be useful if template documents for code of conduct and consent forms could be generally available for reuse in citizen science for humanities projects. We also suggest that if this project is to be extended into schools in the future that students should be encouraged to interview their own relatives where possible. Young students do not ordinarily have experience of being “professional” or conducting recordings, so it is useful to set ground rules, discuss expectations, and practice through role- play prior to being in a live interview situation. Practising interview techniques in a supportive encouraging environment - from checking equipment, question preparation, initial greetings, getting consent, active listening, politely directing the interview back to focus on desired subject matter, and closing - is important to ensure everyone is ready for real interviews, and will give students a chance to gain confidence and focus. Having two or more students conduct interviews simultaneously allows them to share tasks and can work well, with one person asking questions for example, while the other manages the recording technology, as long as who is responsible for which tasks is absolutely clear to everyone. As the activities involved in the project are novel to the students, there is, despite their familiarity with digital applications and devices for their own social activities, still a steep learning curve. Planning time for preparation in finding and using applications, and role-play of interview scenario is very valuable to support students in building confidence and skills. Providing students with access to an experienced interviewer and community leader who can give insight into the social and environmental factors of conducting interviews is very advantageous and we would encourage a similar approach for future citizen powered intergenerational projects. Being very well prepared for interviews - conducting research about places, becoming familiar with local maps and having a prepared list of topics for discussion is essential for interviewers. If introducing stimuli could enhance the interview, then students should allow adequate time to accessing online archives for supporting material like historical photographs and caching them for showing during an interview, and the use of video for recording the interviewees interaction with those cultural artefacts may result in more useful material than audio alone. Setting up the right environment for an interview is important - we learned. Senior citizens, who are being asked to participate in interviews and share personal reflections, should be given ample time to consider questions and general subject matter in advance. Interviewers - should be sensitive to people who may have age-related issues which might affect their participation, e.g. with hearing, sight or memory. Also as one does not know what might be meaningful for an interviewee about places, while questions can and should be prepared, one should also be prepared for the interviews to go off on unexpected tangents. Including a community leader or family member in the engagement process with seniors can help to establish trust. Also for future intergenerational citizen science cultural heritage projects, we suggest introducing a step which enables the senior interviewees become more involved in
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694 the editorial selection process. It is important we think that they can remain involved in the decision-making process and share control over what happens to the presentation of their stories. Taking short segments of audio from the longer interviews for publication on the Internet, is a preferred approach to give visitors to the pilot project’s website a flavor of the interviews most interesting parts, but deciding which segments should be selected and shared is subjective. This necessary reduction may cause confusion, and care should be taken to try to ensure these segments are not likely to be misconstrued, out of the context of a longer interview. Personal information may be shared during interviews in conversational asides, and younger editors may appreciate support in deciding what to share and what should remain private from interview data. The pilot projects success was a high risk and entirely dependent on the willingness to participate and availability to cooperate of three distinct volunteer groups: the teenage school students to make the recordings and design the toolkit, the senior citizens to take part and share their knowledge, the experts in placenames and cultural heritage who provided necessary guidance. We were fortunate to encounter really enthusiastic and hard working teenage students, patient and generous interview subjects, and supportive, cooperative experts and advisors who made this pilot feasible. Having received feedback and support from experts in placenames, architectural conservation, oral history, and community heritage, was very informative in guiding this citizen science pilot’s progress. However, in many cases, the methodologies developed for professional researchers need to be adapted and simplified to make them accessible and usable for citizen volunteers, working with time constraints. This raises an issue of whether this means citizen-led research compromises on quality, and here there are several factors to consider. Are the citizens, who are volunteering in the project motivated to gain skills, or volunteering to give back to society or get social benefits from participation? Is the task involved in the citizen science requiring a highly skilled approach? Will the citizens be repeating the volunteer work, and thus gaining expertise in the process or will they be once off participants? What will motivate people to take part, and how much effort will they make for their contribution? Will there be some parts of the work that everyone wants to do but other tasks that no-one is volunteering to do, creating an imbalance? What expectations will they have if any in return for volunteering their time and effort? We identified some pertinent issues where there are unsolved dilemmas between professional and citizens researchers for humanities in this pilot: the required simplification of methods for acquiring knowledge, access to copyright material such as photographs is an issue; issues arising at editing and analysis stages (where mature studious reflection and experience of researchers directly affects the quality of the selected recordings); and how to manage attribution, ownership and archiving of data collected. All of these issues can been adequately if not perfectly resolved and clarified, within a citizen science project in our experience on this pilot, through supportive networking and ongoing discussion between citizen amateurs and professionals. However formal structures and supports for citizen-powered cultural heritage projects, if available, at the level of institutions, universities, museums, schools and community organizations would greatly facilitate the process and improve the quality of project outputs. This does indicate that citizen powered cultural heritage projects are dependent on access to professional humanities researchers and resources. The issue of resourcing these services on CIVIC EPISTEMOLOGIES Deliverable D4.1 Page 43 of 66
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694 an ongoing basis, which would have to be resolved, as while the experts approached for this pilot agreed to help for no payment - that is not a sustainable approach for rolling out citizen powered cultural heritage projects on a large scale. Ideally for future citizen led research, there would be the potential to establish networks of support with professionals, and allow time to clarify adaptation of methods & acceptable approaches for non-professionals, whether for placenames reseach or oral history recording. While we failed to establish a generic focused approach that any student could use with any senior interviewee, to digitize placenames; we did include a simplified set of steps that would enable placenames to be recorded if it so happened that a suitable senior informant for placenames and sufficiently interested student decided to focus on this. We accept that the results of these recordings may not be at the same standard and quality as professional researchers, but the potential for a broader reach across the country is a real possibility. We gratefully acknowledge the four expert volunteers – Dr Finnegan from Logainm.ie, oral history – Cormac McCarthy from Cuimhneamh an Chlair, architectural conservation – Risteard UaCróinín and community heritage groups – Dr Maxine Keoghan. We did not have capacity to seek these experts feedback to the pilot projects outputs and website produced, to date, but we suggest that getting experts to evaluate the audio quality and content of the recordings would also be a useful step in future similar projects. We also acknowledge the support from Waterford Institute of Technology Staff for the students’ work during work experience. We are grateful for the expertise and encouragement offered from the project consortium partners throughout. The feedback from the students and senior volunteers was indicative that the process of being actively engaged in such a project was enjoyable and rewarding. The students all reported enjoying working on a project with such varied tasks and challenges that traversed both cultural heritage and digital technologies. Some students excelled at design, others became immersed in new challenges editing audio, organizing content or building features for the website. The students involved in the participatory meeting particularly enjoyed meeting with the senior volunteers and conducting the interviews. They were surprised by how interesting they found the stories about known places that made history come alive. The senior volunteers, who agreed to take part, also reported enjoying their participation in the recordings, and meeting with the students. We acknowledge that this pilot study would not have been possible without the dedication and willingness of these senior citizens from the Tramore Local Family Heritage Group, and teenage Transition Year students from the Gaelcholaist Phortlairge, and De La Salle College, to take part.
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694
BIBLIOGRAPHY / ANNEXES
4.1 BIBLIOGRAPHY
| A Revival of Oral History and Loganimeacha Recording. (n.d.). Retrieved June 12, 2015, from
http://heritagerecording.tssg.org/
Andrews, J. H. (1975). A Paper landscape: the Ordnance Survey in nineteenth-century Ireland.
Oxford.
Civilizing Ireland; Ordnance Survey 1824-1842: Ethnography, Cartography, Translation on
JSTOR. (n.d.). Retrieved from
http://www.jstor.org/stable/20520968?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
Clare Places and Placenames: The Importance of Placenames - Risteard UaCróinín. (n.d.).
Retrieved June 14, 2015, from
http://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/coclare/places/importance_of_placenames.htm
Cuimhneamh an Chláir, The Clare Oral History & Folklore Group. (n.d.). Retrieved June 14,
2015, from http://www.clarememories.ie/
Deane, S., & Deane, C. (2010). Field day review. 6, 6,. Dublin: Field Day in association with
Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies.
Dónall Mac Giolla Easpaig. (n.d.). Ireland’s heritage of geographical names | logainm.ie.
Retrieved June 14, 2015, from http://www.logainm.ie/en/res/92
Dúchas.ie. (n.d.). Retrieved June 12, 2015, from http://www.duchas.ie/en
Dúchas.ie: Meitheal Dúchas.ie (Crowdsourcing). (n.d.). Retrieved June 14, 2015, from
http://www.duchas.ie/en/info/meitheal
Friel, B. (1981). Translations: A Play. S. French. Retrieved from
https://books.google.ie/books?id=Pa618eXATr4C
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694
Gillian Smith. (n.d.). History Ireland - “An eye on the Survey.” Retrieved June 14, 2015, from
http://www.historyireland.com/18th-19th-century-history/an-eye-on-the-survey/
Ordnance Survey Ireland | History of Place names. (n.d.). Retrieved June 14, 2015, from
http://www.osi.ie/Education/Third-Level-Academic/History-of-Place-names.aspx
Peacock, A. J. (1993). The Achievement of Brian Friel. C. Smythe. Retrieved from
https://books.google.ie/books?id=lMPfo6bIzSQC
The Schools’ Collection » Star of the Sea Convent, Tramore. (n.d.). Retrieved June 12, 2015,
from http://www.duchas.ie/en/cbes/4428152
Waterford County Museum. (n.d.). Retrieved June 11, 2015, from
http://www.waterfordmuseum.ie/exhibit/web
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694
4.2 ANNEXE
Digital ReMap - Inter-Generational Toolkit For Recording & Mapping Placenames
Civic Epistemologies Civic Epistemologies (http://www.civic-epistemologies.eu) is a project about the participation of citizens in research on cultural heritage and humanities. As partners in this project, we in TSSG, WIT are running a pilot study to discover how a group of citizens, in this case transition year students, can take advantage of digital technologies to discover and record knowledge from other citizens, in this case older people in the community, about a particular cultural heritage subject, in this case rural placenames. We are seeking to work with a group of transition year students, from Waterford, and older people in the community, possibly initially represented by members of local heritage groups, using participatory design approaches, to develop an inter-generational digital mapping toolkit for recording placenames. (http://www.civic-epistemologies.eu/pilot/pilot-on-archaeology-in- rural-ireland/) There are three distinct phases to this work: 4. Design and development of inter-generational digital toolkit, based on existing digital apps and services in the marketplace. 5. Use and evaluation the developed toolkit in fieldwork interviewing older people recording placenames. 6. Presentation and dissemination of recorded data and final toolkit.
Design and Development In the design phase we would like the Transition Year students to engage in participatory workshops with developers, designers and older people (possibly from local heritage organisations). Informed by the shared experiences and information, the students would then work to develop a digital toolkit for reaching out to elderly people in the community - grandparents and neighbours to record their knowledge about rural place names. The expectation is for the students on transition year’s work experience to work with us, in WIT, to define, design, develop, evaluate a prototype social and digital toolkit to facilitate recording and digitizing this knowledge which might other wise be lost. This Digital Remap toolkit might for example consist of a several preexisting or customized smart phone applications, editable digital maps, photography, voice recording and video services. The social aspect of toolkit would consist of guidelines on interview processes, ethics, data privacy and security issues.
Use & Evaluation In the field trial and evaluation phase, the Transition Year students go out and interview older people in their communities, and use the inter-generational digital mapping rural placenames toolkit which they have developed to capture and record the knowledge held by this community about place names. They will note their observations about the use of the toolkit using user experience design and human computer interaction methods - i.e. such as an experience map
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694 to record how they feel about using the technology in social situations. In an ideal scenario they may even be able to roll out the toolkit to a wider group of students and older people to gather more data as in a social workshop event setting.
Presentation & Dissemination of Results In the presentation phase they translate their finding to digital records, with the support of developers from WIT and the project partners, following data management guidelines to ensure that they are findable, secure and retrievable. They record the results of their engagement with the tools and discuss their findings in a focus group. The results from the pilot will be reported in deliverables for the Civic Epistemologies project, and may also form part of papers or articles for academic journals, conferences or general news media. Work Experience Placements We will be offering work experience placements to four or five suitable candidates to work in depth on this pilot study for a European research project Civic Epistemologies (http://www.civic- epistemologies.eu/). Unfortunately we will not be able to offer any payment for this work. We have some flexibility about the dates and duration for the work experience. Ideally we would like to begin with a week or two in October or November and possibly follow up with work on results January/February.
The selected students will experience working in a research environment, at TSSG (www.tssg.org), an ICT research centre, based at Waterford Institute of Technology's Carriganore campus. We are seeking to form a team of students with a mix of different skills and interests who are enthusiastic about the project, and will strive to work together as a team productively.
The mix of skills we are looking for within the team are:
Experience and familiarity with exploring new digital technologies such as smart phone applications and smart devices Good organisational and planning skills Excellent social skills and emotional intelligence Good design and presentation skills.
This might suit students who have interests in careers in cultural heritage, social science, media, research, or digital technologies. We are particularly interested in working with students and schools who have experience or interest in working with older people and technology during their transition year programme.
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694
4.3 SAMPLE ITINERARY OF A WEEK’S WORK EXPERIENCE IN TSSG, WIT PARTICIPATING IN THE CIVIC EPISTEMOLOGIES PROJECT.
Pilot Study Objective: To put together a student citizen science toolkit for cultural heritage, that will comprise of information about: how to conduct interviews; and record data about placenames from elderly people using mobile apps, and web technologies; and how to manage that data so that it can be found and used by other people. Goals:
1. To include students, elderly people, researchers, and digital developers in co-design activities, ensuring that all people involved are respected, and supported in contributing, appropriate to their skills and knowledge. 2. To record older people’s knowledge, experience and understanding of placenames, sensitive to the unique and personalized value particular micro placenames may have for individual persons. 3. To document the benefits and drawbacks of using digital tools to record this type of cultural heritage information. 4. To document students’ experience of designing and using digital tools to participate in intergenerational projects.
Benefits to student participants: Learn about citizen science in action. Gain insights into how European research is conducted. Gain understanding and experience of research methods, including participatory approaches. Become informed about issues related to ethics in research, data privacy and security. Experience team-work, and learn how to work effectively with people with different ages, skill sets, culture and experiences. Increase know-how in researching, adapting and using digital technologies to tackle societal challenges – in this case accessing cultural heritage information. Develop capabilities in preparation, conducting, and recording interviews. Become familiar with data collection, management, analysis and presentation. Have the opportunity to present work done to a group in a meeting situation. Possibility to contribute to European research, and have work included in official project websites and literature.
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694
DAY 1 - Monday: AM Introductions Present self, interests, skills within team.
Map out Research Objectives for Pilot Study & Outline the Project plan for the Week Introduction to known technologies and devices proposed for use in the project. Introduction to citizen science related concepts: ie collective intelligence, crowdsourcing, data collection, participatory experiments, and serious games. Whiteboard ideas for how to progress project. o Output a list topics for further research and preparation: i.e. apps for mapping, apps for voice recording, placenames websites, web applications for recording experience on the project, ethics, data management, interview techniques etc., inventory of digital platforms and tools (ie phones, computers available) o Prioritise research items. o Set goals and deadlines (ie finalise wording of 3 interview questions by Tuesday PM, capture all significant data by Friday. o Divide and assign items to individuals/pairs. Monday: PM Finalise and confirm logistics, times, places, settings for participatory meetings. (prearranged by WIT) – ie emails, phone calls, checking web. Research items mapped in morning planning. Document findings in short paragraphs on shared project software tool: ie links, articles, notes. Download, installation and testing of shortlist of sample applications. Prepare collateral for participatory meetings – ie ensure name tags, post-its, flip charts, handouts etc are ready as required. Regroup to share and document work done. Improvise Role Play Scenarios of interviews. (Learn about timing, interview techniques, managing data capture, equipment distractions, etc. Revise actions list. Assign tasks for next day. Document daily experience & work done on project management application. Tuesday: AM Standup meeting to review progress and plan day’s activities. Further Installation, refinement and testing of shortlist of selected applications for mobile and/or web. Ie Googlemaps or Open Street Maps.
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694
Work on interview questions. Finalise preparation for participatory meeting – ie collateral and logistics. Mini-trial role play of interviews using proposed technologies and interview questions within team. Review and discuss changes required. Discuss and check plans (prepared by WIT and Arctur) for data collection, tagging, storage and analysis. (What are the ethical and legal issues with data collection? How do I share or transfer recordings? Where do I store recordings? How do I make them findable for other people? Can I link images, and recordings, on a digital map? ) Document & record work done on project management application. Tuesday: PM Participatory meeting with representatives from heritage groups, developers and students, to finalise logistics for interviews. Discuss: o Significance of placenames - 15mins o Data management - privacy and protection. – 10mins o Present outline of tools desired, and available for the Digital ReMap toolkit. 10 mins o Present wording of questions for interview. 5 mins. o Tea and Coffee Break. Informal chat. o Mini-trial role-play of interviews using technologies and interview questions within participatory group. – 20 mins o Review, discuss & refine. – 30 mins.
Outline feasible refinements required to toolkit based on participatory feedback. (eg This could include a list of things such as: alter introductory questions, make sure to explain written consent forms, use a different voice recording app, take hand written notes and tag interview responses concurrently with recordings, always ensure two people are present for interviews). Discuss & Document work done on project management application.
Wednesday: AM Standup meeting to review progress & plan day’s activities. Further finessing, adaptation and testing of the toolkit prototype and interview questions in response to feedback from participatory meeting and team. Decide on final components of toolkit for pilot study. Documenting rationale for final selection of items for toolkit. (e.g. spreadsheet of applications included with feature list, cost, and technology interdependencies). Prepare guideline steps for use of the digital toolkit.
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694
Mini-trial roleplay of interviews using final toolkit technologies, following guidelines and interview questions within team. Final adjustments, preparations and checklists: print written consent forms for use in interviews, ensure access fully charged devices, print interview guidelines on cards. Discuss plan b.
Wednesday: PM – Interviews about Placenames Meeting with cultural heritage group. Present project pilot study objectives. Show sample of envisioned information. Some students conduct final interviews with elderly volunteers from the heritage group using Final Digital ReMap toolkit, following guidelines and using interview questions. Other students document the process of using the digital toolkit. Daily review: Discussion and documentation of work done on project management application. Thursday: AM – Reviewing the Interviews and data management. Standup meeting to review progress & plan day’s activities. Review the interviews. Review data captured. Manage data collected. ie. Anonymise & save raw data, transmit into new formats as required. Prepare data for, tagging and categorizing. Map results and populate into web application data aggregation tool (provided). Review toolkit. Review method. Document findings. Thursday: PM – Data Mining and Infographics, Analyse Data collected. Outline findings about the placenames. Consider how to present information. Design infographics using web tools. Evaluation and suggested enhancements to the digital tool kit. Revise any proposed changes and basic steps to usage. Collate data infographics and findings into presentation. CIVIC EPISTEMOLOGIES Deliverable D4.1 Page 52 of 66
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694
Daily review: Discussion and documentation of work done on project management application Friday: AM – Co-Evaluation Participatory Meeting with all pilot study partners – students, heritage group, developers, researchers. Present data collected and findings back to the participatory group – infographics and findings. – 20 mins Review data - how can it be reused, or added into existing data libraries. Review toolkit - Discuss what worked and what was unexpected. How the technologies supported or hindered the data collection. Review methods. Discuss how people, both students and heritage volunteers were affected by the project and use or technologies as an intergenerational bridge. Was it interesting? Awkward. Propose enhancements, extensions or revisions to toolkit – either digital or social. Document. Friday: PM – Final Documentation, conclusions and recommendations. Final documentation about the toolkit, further requirements, what has been learned, etc. Package digital toolkit for redistribution to wider school communities. Review and document experiences during the week.
4.4 TRAMORE AREA FAMILY HERITAGE GROUP MEETING PREPARATORY NOTES To do: Be welcoming, cheerful and polite Have three chairs set up on each side of the table Have the phone charged and ready to record and the charger ready if necessary Have teas and coffees ready to give Have the laptop ready with duchas and google maps bookmarked and connected with the TV Have questions prepared Have the room ready
Questions to ask:
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694
Can we record the conversation? Name, birthplace, area they live in now Meanings of the area they were born in and/or currently live Folklore stories Education Recreational/sporting activities to do back then Interesting things to do in their area Labour Tramore place names o Tank field o Canon field o Newtown - Newtown head o Railway square o Market street o Turret house o Station works o Turn tables o Sea baths o Doneraile When/why the train stopped?
4.5 TRAMORE AREA FAMILY HERITAGE GROUP - QUESTIONS FOR PART 1 1. Where are you from? 2. Do you know the meaning behind the name of the area of where you are from? 3. Tell me an interesting story about where you’re from? 4. Do you know any folklore stories about your area? 5. Did you go to school in the area? 6. Were you involved in the GAA? 7. What activities could be done in your area? 8. Did you work in the area? 9. What did you work as? 10. What can you tell me about the train station? 11. Did you ever use the train? 12. Was it widely used? 13. Did you ever hear of the train crashing? 14. Do you know when or why the train stopped?
Questions for part 2 15. Can you tell us about the a. Tank field b. Canon field c. Newtown d. Sea baths
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694
e. Gas works f. Tramore House 16. Methodist church
4.6 TRAMORE AREA FAMILY HERITAGE GROUP PARTICIPATORY MEETING WEDNESDAY THE 5TH OF NOVEMBER
“Student A” account Two men called John and Noel from Tramore area family heritage group came in to the TSSG building to talk to us about the heritage of their area. We interviewed them in two separate sections. The first section included just talking, no technology just conversing. In this section we asked them questions, which we had prepared previously. We didn’t need to ask them all the questions because they answered them without even being asked. I felt that once you asked them one question they would keep talking and would eventually answer more than one question at the one time. For the second part we brought in technology and connected it up to the TV. On this we brought up maps, pictures and the Dúchas website. In my opinion I felt that the maps were the most successful things we used on the technology front. We used old Ordinance Survey Ireland maps for this, which showed them Tramore before it was built up and urbanised. I found by using the maps it helped trigger their memories and they could tell us a bit about the area on the map, such as when the road was 3ft lower than the promenade, or the train station and turn tables. In my opinion, I thought the pictures were less effective but still gave us information on places that we didn’t know where or what it was. For most of the pictures they gave us a background on the stories in the pictures. Noel seemed particularly interested in the duchas website and the information there. John actually knew the teacher and some of the students who had old copybooks on the website. In between our two sections we had a break where Edel and Maxine brought in sandwiches and we were all able to sit down and eat and chat not only about history but modern topics too. During our interview Edel and Maxine stayed outside. I felt this was effective because it gave us all time to become comfortable and feel as if we were all on the same level with no authority figures around. When Maxine, Noel and John arrived we all got teas and coffees and this eased the atmosphere. Also, john began to tell me a bit about his children and started asking me about what I’d like to do in college. This led to us having a mutual understanding of one another and again made everyone feel comfortable around each other. If I was to give anybody tips or advice on doing this particular participatory meeting, I would tell them to: Always let people speak and take an interest in what they’re saying. Shake hands with a good handshake. Make eye contact when speaking to people as that makes you look interested and confident. You need to be prepared and be ready for the meeting for it to be flowing and successful.
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694
Keep bringing the interviewee back on topic in a polite manner but to let them speak and not interrupt. You should try to get a photo with the interviewees for websites or blogs etc. Have your recording device and other devices ready. Have your questions prepared and printed. Have your websites, maps etc. prepared. Be welcoming. Once you are friendly, polite and prepared they will answer your questions and help you as much as they can. “Student S.” account Yesterday we had prepared questions for the elderly. We had split the interview down into two parts. One part without technology and the second with technology and maps (etc.). We took a break between the interview, and split it into two parts. Each part is 1 hour. We had prepared questions before hand to ask them about places on the map. We asked for stories about various place names, why it has that name and did anything interesting happen here. One of the elders had an interesting story about a German bomber that had flown over Tramore being chased by two British Spitfires. It had crashed landed in a field just outside Tramore. And all 5 crew members (aged 18-22) survived. The elderly became quite relaxed and we let their stories flow, and this led us to other questions we never would have thought to ask. After the first part we took a break and had sandwiches brought in. before we brought in the technology part (2).
In the second part we showed them some interactive O.S.I. maps to ask them some questions about the Methodist church that was in Tramore at the time and also some of the stories behind some of the place-names in their area and if they knew anything interesting about them. Then we went on to show them some old photographs of Tramore. We showed them postcards of the Grand hotel and of the Haunted well down be Newtown. They had told us that you could see a women standing near the haunted well and if you looked away and then back again she would disappear. They had also told us about the racetrack and how busy it was; and also about how people used come from all over the country during the four-day race festival. We then went on to show them dúchas.ie it’s a website that recorded all the data that had been collected in the Dúchas (duchas.ie ) project back in the 1930’s in which school children were asked to collect stories from their parents and grandparents to record in note books and hand them into their teachers. One of them seem very interested in the site because he had a sister who had the same teacher that had taken part in the project Sister Consiglio (the teacher from the Tramore area who coordinated the Tramore students contributions to the Dúchas project) and had taken down the name of the site. We then ended the recording the interview had lasted around two and a half hours and was a valuable and enjoyable experience. “Student C.” account
At 11:00 AM we organised for two senior citizens from the Tramore are family heritage group to come in and tell stories about their life and times in Tramore.
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694
We asked for their consent to record them and take pictures of them telling their stories. We had some questions prepared to ask them about the history of their area. Maxine Keoghan, the manager of the group, came in the day before and spoke to us on how to keep the conversation going and on what kind of questions to avoid such as religion. She also advised us not to use to much technology as it might distract them.
Noel and John came in with Maxine at 11:00 o clock as was organised. After about 5 minutes of formalities such as consent forms and recorded permission, Maxine and Edel Jennings exited the room and left Aisling Sean and I with Noel and John to ask the questions.
Many of the questions didn’t need to be asked because John told us everything in one tangent which was quite fortunate as it led us to questions we never would have thought to ask. Such as rationing during the Second World War, and about scares that Ireland would have to go to war. I asked john did he remember anything about the German bombing of Dublin. He said he knew nothing of that, but he did remember an incident where a German bomber was chased down south of Belfast by three RAF Spitfires, and was engaged and shot down over Tramore.
At 12:15 we took a 15 minute break, Maxine and Edel came in with sandwiches and tea.
During the second half of the interview we brought up old O.S.I. maps of Tramore from the early 1900s. these maps showed street names and building that have since been either changed or removed. John said that the knocking of the Methodist chapel and replacing it with an Xtravision during the 1990s was ‘The biggest disgrace.’
All in all I think that the format of interview worked quite well. It was a good idea for Maxine and Edel to leave the room and leave it to us to ask the questions we saw fit. The break in the middle was important to divide the purely conversational half of the interview and the part where we used the maps and pictures on the screen. However we forgot to take pictures even though we had their consent.
4.7 WHY WE ARE CHOOSING ORAL HISTORY TO LEAD OVER PLACENAMES 10. We found that finding out about oral history is more achievable than placenames 11. We found the oral history more interesting than placenames 12. We also found that oral history is unrecorded as opposed to placenames which has been recorded by websites such as logainm.ie 13. Most people have more information on the oral history of their areas from stories as opposed to placenames 14. We only have a short period of time so the oral history is more feasible 15. The process for placenames are very scientific 16. It requires the following of a scientific process which people receive training on 17. We want it to be Transition Year students so it has to be an easy simple to follow process as they are volunteers
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694
18. From speaking to experts we found that not everybody would know a lot of information so not every senior citizen would have a lot if any information or might not want to might to speak with us.
4.8 SHORT DESCRIPTIONS OF SELECTED AUDIO SNIPPETS FOR PUBLICATION BY “STUDENT C” FROM EDITED RECORDINGS EMMIGRATION
John talks about how all of Maura murphy’s children emigrated to England after school
THE SAND HILL PEOPLE People used to live down by the sand dunes and fished for a living
The (DE)construction corps The army camp during the Second World War down by Riverstown
FREDDY’S BALL ROOM Noel gives a few tips on how to get into a dance without paying
RIGHT HAND OR NO HAND John talks about the oppression of left-handedness in schools
PASSAGE VS CHEEK POINT John talks about the fishing rivalry between cheek point and passage.
4.9 RECOMMENDED/SUGGESTED META DATA
Audio Interviews - Interviewer Name - Interviewee Name - Relationship (if any) between interviewer and interviewee - Date of interview - Duration of Interview - Place interview took place - Interviewee Place of Birth - Interviewee current place of residence CIVIC EPISTEMOLOGIES Deliverable D4.1 Page 58 of 66
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694
- Interviewee job - Duration of Interview - No of segments edited and extracted for sharing Video Interviews - Interviewer Name - Interviewee Name - Relationship (if any) between interviewer and interviewee - Date of interview - Duration of Interview - Place interview took place - Interviewee Place of Birth - Interviewee current place of residence - Interviewee job - Duration of Interview - No of segments edited and extracted for sharing - Oral history related to places - audio snippets metadata - Main subject of audio snippet - placename - Tags – open – i.e., train, chocolate, ww2, etc. - Duration of segment - Name and reference of master interview. - Interviewer Name - Interviewee Name - Relationship (if any) between interviewer and interviewee - Date of interview - Duration of Interview - Place interview took place Placenames Interview Metadata - Parish - Townland (Irish: baile fearainn) - Adjacent townlands - Roads/Streets - Houses - Fields - Crossroads - Laneways - Natural points of interest (hills, rivers, streams, etc.) - Artificial points of interest (castles, buildings, power stations, etc.) - Phonetic spelling of placename (written) - Pronunciation of placename (link to an audio snippet)
4.10 RECOMMENDED GUIDELINES FOR RECORDING INTERVIEWS FOR OTHER STUDENTS BASED ON EXPERIENCE [STUDENT B] - Acquire a recording device and a recording app in which you can easily share your data
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694
- Test out the sound on it before you go to record someone - Make sure you know how to work the recording device - Ask for the permission of the person you are recording - Figure out can you upload it onto SoundCloud - Have a consent form for them to sign. - Send the recording via email to [email protected]
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694
4.11 LEAFLET PRODUCED FOR TRAMORE ACTIVE RETIREMENT AGM
Revival of oral history In WIT a pilot study is being being run on ‘Logainmneacha’or ‘place-names.’ These ‘logainmneacha’ say a lot about the history of their area. However, with modern developments, such as urban sprawl, the building of motorways and the shifting of field boundaries, many of these ‘logainmneacha’ have been lost, and with them a portion of Irish history.
Conall, Aisling and Sean are transition year students working at WIT to save the remainder of this knowledge, through digitizing these ‘logainmneacha’ and making them available to the public at large.
We are inviting you to WIT campus 2 in Carriganore on either Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, November the 11th, 12th or 13th to come in have a chat with us between 11am and 1pm. You will be asked to answer a few questions regarding the history and folklore of your local area. With your permission, the information you give will be recorded and typed out on a computer. Tea and coffee will be available for all who come along.
We also wish to create a website to publish the information. And to create a map of the area with these logainmneacha inserted. We also plan to have a forum, where visitors to the site can submit any
Your contribution would be greatly appreciated.
This pilot study is part of the civic epistemologies project funded by the European Com mission under FP7.
You can also ring us on 051302951 we will be around to answer between 10am and 4pm or email us at [email protected] with any information you have regarding your area or any stories you have about your area. We hope to see or hear from you soon.
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694
4.12 GOLDEN YEARS FESTIVAL ORGANISER PHONECALL PREPARATION NOTES When: Any day or Golden Years Festival dates 11th, 12th and 13th November 2014 Who I am: school TY student. What are we doing: A pilot study in WIT about the heritage of Waterford. Oral history. “I know you are running the Golden Years festival and I was wondering if there is any way we could ask some of the people attending your festival three simple questions and record them. We have consent forms and recording devices.” For: Website to ask other young people to help us record the heritage by asking them to interview grandparents, historian neighbor. When and where: Anytime people would like to be interviewed in the tower hotel for 5/10 minutes per person. We are hoping to interview approx. 5/6 people.
4.13 BLOG POST FROM GAELCHOLAISTE PHORT LÁIRGE STUDENTS
We are Transition Year students from the Gaelcholáiste Phort Láirge and we are a part of the Civic Epistemologies project.
The focus of our part in the project is on Logainmneacha or placenames, which we have decided to expand to include oral history about places. This project was started in August 2014, however I have only been on-board since the 3rd of November. This is a pilot study aims to test the feasibility of recording the oral history and ‘logainmneacha’ of Waterford through citizen science, and find out how teenagers could record towards heritage information from older people in Waterford.
On the first day I came in I met up with Edel Jennings, the project co-ordinator and my two co- workers, Admin 1 and Author 1. We took up residence in the Ideas Room on the west Waterford Institute of Technology campus in Carraiganore, Waterford. It’s an irregular polygonal room with four walls and a huge panoramic window with a view out over the lower Suir hill and Tory hill
The first thing we did that day was made a road map of our objectives for the first week. These objectives included our aim to make a website and all that that entails, how to acquire oral history and Logainmneacha to collect and how we were going to record them. We also looked at other websites that have done similar studies to what we had hoped to do such as the Meath Fieldnames Project (www.meathfieldnames.com), Kilkenny Oral History Project (http://www.cklp.ie/?page_id=971). We found the national websites Duchas.ie (www.duchas.ie/en) and Logainmn.ie.
On Tuesday we arranged to meet Maxine Keoghan, A local historian from Tramore. (She was a founding member of a Local Family Heritage Group which has been meeting for sharing stories weekly since 2012). She advised us on how to interview older people and also gave us some tips on general interviewing procedure. We learned how to make people feel more comfortable and how important it is to let interviewees know if and when they are being recorded. (We have a policy that both written consent from guardians or parents is essential before engagement in
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694 the project by teenagers, and written consent is also essential from any interviewees before any recordings are made. A consent form is available on our website.)
On Wednesday we had a participatory meeting with John and Noel, (two senior members of the Tramore Area Family Heritage Group). We had spent the previous afternoon preparing our questions, equipment and software and we were ready.
We had prepared a few general questions about Tramore places in advance, which allowed the interviewees - who have both lived there all their lives - to share their knowledge, experiences and memories of the area for the first half of the meeting. We also had studied modern and historical maps of the area on the Ordinance Survey of Ireland website’s public viewer, and were ready to ask John and Noel about some observable changes in the second half of the meeting. We had also selected old photographs of the Tramore area on the Waterford County Museum website to discuss. We all enjoyed a chat with tea and sandwiches in between the recording and interviewing sessions.
John and Noel shared fascinating information. Our meeting with John and Noel taught us a lot about the history of Tramore and gave us experience on how to conduct interviews the right way.
On Thursday we transferred the recordings from the recording device we used (the default voice recorder application on a Samsung GoogleNexus Android phone) and edited them with Audacity. Audacity is a really useful app that let us edit our interviews however we liked. However, editing an hour and a half of audio is a tedious job and took us all of Thursday and most of Friday. We had to edit out the silences, questions and isolate the best bits of the interviews for publication on the website.
On Friday we called a nice man called Aengus Finnegan. Aengus has a PhD in logainmneacha, and he advised us on the process of gathering placenames, the significance of recording pronunciations, and we also discussed the line between oral history about places and logainmneacha, which was tremendously helpful. We also spoke to Risteard ua Cróinín the Architectural Conservation Officer in Co. Clare (who has written passionately about saving placenames before they are lost forever and how it might be possible for teenagers to record heritage from older people in the community). He advised us on the particular methodologies involved in researching placenames, and when we mentioned oral history suggested we contact Cuimhneach an Clair, a community group which has become very proficient in doing it well, for more information.
On the second Monday “Admin 2” (another TY student) joined us. This is when we got the website started. We had sorted out where the WordPress.org site would be hosted, on the TSSG server. On Monday afternoon, Eamonn Power, an engineer with the Infrastructure Group in TSSG, spoke to us about setting up a community website, roles, and community guidelines. He also took us down to see the super computer called Fionn. Fionn has about 1.5 petabytes of memory and does calculations for Met Eirinn four times a day. We were all in awe of Fionn.
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694
On Tuesday afternoon we were received a visit from Zeta Dooly who spoke to us about project management. Also, Tracy Browne, the Design and Usability team manager came into us on the same day and spoke to us about logos, fonts and general design issues. Admin 2 and Admin 1 worked quite well together building the site of a wordpress.org template called RestImpo.
On Wednesday we began to upload information to the website like our first audio clips from the interview with John and Noel and various pictures. However the layout didn’t seem to suit our content and after many hours during which we changed the theme multiple times, we eventually decided on using a theme called Catch Kathmandu.
On Thursday, We continued to add to the site putting up more pictures, thinking of logos, content editing and general designing. We also had a few hiccups with plug-ins but we sorted those out as best as possible.
Friday was our last day and we spent the day finalizing what we could. Editing audio, visual and text content and finishing some technical work took a long time and we ran into a few hiccups along the way. However, the website still looks great so far and in a few days we hope to put the website live.
Over the past two weeks we have learnt more than we even could have imagined from Edel and each other. We learned amazing things such as web design, interviewing techniques and team work. We would like to thank TSSG, WIT and most of all Edel Jennings for making it possible.
4.14 BLOG POST FROM DE LA SALLE STUDENT A
I am transition year student in De La Salle College Waterford and I spent my weeks work experience in TSSG WIT. The main things that I was doing this week were working with the maps, tagging audio recordings and sending emails. But I did other things as well.
On Monday we were introduced to the Civic Epistemologies project. I read through the website as it is and looked for some problems and looked for things that could be improved. I found some but the website was very well done so far. Next I looked at other websites such as duchas.ie which are like the website we are making. I looked for some ideas from the websites that we could use on our website. Next we found the problem that we needed maps for the website. I then wrote a letter to Waterford city library asking them if we could use the maps from the library for our website. I then listened to the recordings that we already have and I took down the places that were mentioned in the recordings. I did this so we could fill in these places on the map at a later time. I then went around taking photographs of the work the students did on the board over the two weeks previous to us. This is so they can be read over at a different time after we rubbed it off the board. Finally I watched a YouTube video, which was about using the maps login on WordPress to help me use the maps plugin on Tuesday.
On Tuesday I was mostly working with maps. I finally figured out how to make a marker and put it onto the maps for the website. This meant that I could now start listening to the recordings and put the places mentioned on them into the map. We also found that you can attach recordings to the marker so that when you click on the marker the recording starts playing. I
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694 also got an email back from the city library giving us a link to maps we could use. I then sent an email back to them asking if we could use old photographs if they have any. I also made my first post onto the website. I posted it to the news section of the website. I posted about how Student F and I have joined the project and I went into a small bit of detail about what each of us are doing with the project. The only problem I faced during the day was trying to get the markers to appear on the maps but then we figured out how to do it.
On Wednesday the first thing I did was that I found that I received another reply from the city library. They recommended that I go onto the city museum website to find suitable photographs. I went onto the website and found that the photographs were very good. I then emailed the museum to see if we would be allowed to use the photographs on our website. Next I typed up new posts for each of the recordings on our website. I added the names of the interviewers and interviewees and the date and place to the recording post. This meant that I had to change the links on the map markers. That was the next thing I did but it did not take too long as I didn’t have all of the markers completed yet. Finally I continued to work with the maps. I added all of the markers into Tramore, which meant that I had all of the markers in.
The first thing I did on Thursday was I finished the map page on the website. I finally figured out how to put a map on the actual page instead of the sidebar. To do this I had to copy the short code of my map and then I had to paste it onto the maps page. I ten had to write about how I did this on the maps page. Next I started to clean up the recordings page. We got rid of some of the categories and page because they had extra recordings that we already had on the website. Then I had to delete some more of the recordings. Finally I had to look at the take part section of the website and see if there were any guidelines or anything that could be missing. I drew up a simple graph of what are the most important guidelines.
On Friday the first thing that I did on Friday was I wrote up a small list of the most important things that people would need to do to take part. I then looked at trying to allow people to put markers on the map on the website but I didn’t know how to do it and I did not have enough time to try to figure it out. Next I wrote up guidelines and example questions for someone that is doing a recording about placenames. Finally I wrote up a small bit more about maps and I out it onto the maps page on the Website.
Overall I had a very good week of work experience at TSSG doing the Civic Epistemologies project!
4.15 BLOG POST FROM DE LA SALLE STUDENT B
I am a transition year student in De La Salle college on work experience in the TSSG in Carriganore. At the start of the week I was researching the topic of the project and looking through what parts of the website were already done. On Tuesday I learned a lot about how to use Photoshop, designed the project logo in Photoshop and I talked about the issues and potential solutions with the website. On Wednesday I worked on the logo a lot and have nearly finished it just needed some fine tuning. I also edited and proofread content already on the website and checking for spelling and grammar errors.
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 632694
On Thursday I designed the four different icons that are used on the front page to link between featured pages. On Friday I completely rebuilt the logo with everything I learned during the week and uploaded it to the website.
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